Huntress of the Wastes
by TJbrena
Summary: Sent to investigate the fate of a pair of missing Galactic Federation ships, Samus Aran follows a set of engine trails and a mysterious signal through a wormhole. En route to the crash site of one of the ships, her gunship is shot down by an unknown entity. Her upgrades scattered throughout a wild wasteland, and determined to complete her mission, she accepts help from the Courier.
1. Clipped Wings

It'd been a slow month until then for Samus Aran. Not many assignments from the Galactic Federation, mostly being sent to wipe out the odd Space Pirate outpost situated just outside Federation territory or jurisdiction. Jobs from other sources had either been ones she was over-qualified for, or ones that she didn't feel were right; even bounty hunters had standards.

So when her handler sent her a communique saying the cargo ship _GFS Sleipnir_ and its escort, the destroyer _GFS Ragnarok_ had gone missing on a patrol in an unmapped star system, she jumped on the opportunity. The _Sleipnir_ and _Ragnarok_ had technically been inside Federation space, but not all solar systems were mapped, given that there were millions of stars in her galaxy alone.

She was onboard her _Hunter_-class gunship; the flexible "Delta" variant she normally used instead of the more nimble and combat-centric "Tau" she'd utilized during the Phazon War or the older, more complex and more durable "Beta" she'd used on Tallon IV.

Samus made the jump to the designated system, dropping to a "quieter" sub-light speed inside the Oort cloud. By proceeding at sub-light from there she would be much harder to detect, and her ship's passive sensors would scan the system and gather all the data they could. The gunship's autopilot would be able to handle the transit through the cloud of cosmic debris, so she began to run over a recently-formulated contingency plan.

The biggest problem she'd had of late was that severe malfunctions or damage to her suit would cause her to lose many of her suit's functions and weapons. So far she'd been lucky enough to be on planets where there were already copies or variants of the upgrades, but she didn't want to rely on finding advanced civilizations where convergent technology compatible with her base Power Suit had developed. That meant a backup of the Varia Suit she wore would be needed too.

Her plan for this was to store most of the upgrades in her gunship, pending any need for them. That way, if her suit was damaged she'd be able to recover the functions easily enough. If her ship was damaged in a crash and she wasn't onboard, the upgrades would be ejected over an adjustable radius of up to 10 kilometers. The ship already had self-repair routines, and her Power Suit could track the upgrades wherever they went. If something bad happened, she'd be ready.

Samus' gunship exited the Oort cloud and entered the system proper. It seemed to be unremarkable for the most part, and had a cursory similarity to the Sol system in its layout. There were a few rocky planets within a few astronomical units of the yellow sun, then an asteroid belt, and some gas giants. A few dwarf planets clung to the outer edges of the system, and one was an obvious extrasolar capture judging by its contrarian orbit. But all that was still fairly unremarkable, and there were still plenty of differences from the system that had cradled humanity.

Her sensors began to scan for Galactic Federation-issued Identify Friend or Foe tags, and after an hour none were detected. Even faded signs of combat were absent. It was as though they'd traveled to the system and disappeared.

As she neared the asteroid belt a few AUs from the sun, her vessel's communications suite picked up a faint signal. It immediately notified the pilot, showing up on a screen to her left. Tapping in a few commands isolated the nature of it.

It was an amplitude modulated radio wave, an ancient technology used for communications, and a quick analysis confirmed it was not a natural phenomenon. Because of its relative inefficiency, no known faction in the galaxy had used it for centuries. Combined with how isolated this system was from known colonized or inhabited space and the seemingly inhospitable worlds there, the only explanation she could come up with was that an ancient satellite had somehow made its way to this system.

After entering a few commands, she heard the signal clear up almost instantly. It sounded like speech, and after a few moments of trying to identify the language from a vast database of alien dialects, it came up as plain English. Of course, Samus recognized it almost immediately, even though the signal was being interrupted by the occasional piece of space debris.

"-_News folks! That crazy kid we all know and love is up to his old tricks out west. Not much info's come out about him since he left a few years back, but our buddies in pow- -mor just made contact with a government out west a few days ago. And now they've found out our boy has been fightin' the - -ight over there too. That's right kiddies, that shield of hope ain't gone, he's just gone to kick some ass somewhere else. Consider me officially in a good mood folks, even with that Fran-ein offensive goin' on. This is - -og! Owwwwwwww! And you're listening to - News Radio, bringing you the truth, no matter how bad it hurts. And now, some music_," A male voice announced.

Then the music started playing. A couple twangs on a string instrument, then a keyboard-type instrument.

"_Maybe you'll think of me when you are all alone.  
Maybe the one who is waiting for you.  
Will prove untrue, then what will you do?"_

She realized that the signal was coming from what seemed to be empty space. A scan with the ship's active sensors revealed what was there; a wormhole of some sort. It also revealed very faint ion trails leading to the wormhole, showing that the _Sleipnir_ and _Ragnarok_ had been there, and possibly gone through to investigate the signal.

"_Maybe you'll sit and sigh, wishing that I were near.  
Then maybe you'll ask me to come back again.  
And maybe I'll say 'Maybe'_."

After some contemplating, she came to the conclusion that her best shot at finding the missing destroyer was to go through that wormhole.

"_Maybe you'll think of me when you are all alone.  
Maybe the one who is waiting for you.  
Will prove untrue, then what will I do?_"

She _could_ report back to the Federation and recommend they send a team to investigate the phenomenon more thoroughly, and go on with other assignments while she awaited news from such a team, all the while believing whatever she wanted to about the fate of that crew.

Or Samus could try to rescue those marines and space jockeys herself, giving them help while they were more likely to be alive at a greater personal risk. The choice was an obvious one to her.

"_Maybe you'll sit and sigh, wishing that I were near.  
Then maybe you'll ask me to come back again.  
And maybe I'll say 'Maybe'_."

As the tune ended, Samus set a course to head into the wormhole, hoping it'd drop her near the objective. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath as her vessel entered the rift, and opened them a few moments later to find herself in a new solar system.

Her navigation systems determined she was still in the Milky Way galaxy, but struggled to establish contact with the nav-bouys that aided in travelling the cosmos. In the meantime, they began to manually ascertain her location by matching the stars to known charts. The dropped sensor and navigation buoys near the anomaly, marking her point of ingress.

The comm systems picked up that same signal from earlier, but much stronger. What was more, a Galactic Federation-issued distress beacon was emanating from a location on the surface of a body 1 AU from the star, a few thousand kilometers from the source of the signal that had caught her attention.

When her ship's computer said she was in the Sol system, she dismissed it as a malfunction. But approaching the third rock from the sun she passed several planets, which increased a feeling of dread each time she neared one.

First was a teal gas giant with an axial tilt of around 90 degrees that put it on its sides, so its axis of rotation was about parallel to the plane of the system. Next came a larger golden giant, with majestic rings that almost anybody would recognize. Then an even larger gas giant with a single red spot passed by. An asteroid belt and a red planet just intensified the nagging at the edge of her mind.

Samus approached the planet the beacon came from and set a course to land as close to the source as possible. She saw what looked too much like Earth for comfort, but the planet's surface was drab from what one could only assume was terrible abuse. The oceans were gray, most of the land was brown, and ancient satellites orbited the planet aimlessly and without purpose.

On a hunch, she scanned the sun, hoping that she'd jumped into the distant future and not just a distant place. But it was exactly where it should've been. Judging by the positions of the planets, her onboard computer determined it was sometime in the mid to late 23rd century, assuming this was the real Sol system and not some twisted copy. With all the bizarre things she'd seen thus far in her life, she considered it a serious possibility that this was a duplicate of the Sol system, just as it was possible she was in the past, if not the one familiar to her.

The bounty hunter tapped her exposed neck twice with her index and middle finger, and a helmet materialized around her head, sealing her suit. She never more than vaguely understood the science of the energy-matter conversion that allowed to simply materialize or dematerialize the suit literally at will, despite having read several Federation hypotheses on the technology.

She felt the gunship shake as it entered the atmosphere, heating the exterior of the hull to several thousand degrees. After a few minutes, the fireball surrounding her ship ceased to exist, and a final approach vector was entered.

A few hundred kilometers from her target, a blast of energy hit her ship from below, damaging one of the engines. Samus attempted to level the craft and succeeded somewhat, putting it into a more controlled descent and angle. After that, she prepared to eject. Any upgrades already prepared as per her contingency plan would eject with her.

After a sigh, she slammed her left hand down on the eject button, and she shot through the floor of her craft, an energy field generated by the vessel slowing the first half of her descent.

After that, she began to fall unhindered through the night sky. Remnants of the energy field had given her a bright golden aura, and supercharged her shields in preparation for impact.

When Samus finally impacted the ground, her shields took most of the damage, and most of that was absorbed by the excess shielding that had been imparted on her prior to reaching terminal velocity.

In what the huntress regarded as a massive stroke of luck, she was no worse for wear after falling at least two kilometers to what seemed to be the hard, dry dirt of a desert.

Putting all other concerns aside for the moment, she quickly went over her inventory of equipment and weaponry.

The Varia Suit she wore was still fine, not damaged to the point of being reduced to baser functions. She had her Power Beam, a Wave Beam and an Ice Beam. A hundred-fifty missiles were ready for use. Her Morph Ball, Boost Ball and Bombs worked fine. The Space Jump boots and Grapple Beam were functional. The visor functions were all there, Combat, Scan, Thermal, X-Ray, Dark, Echo and Command. Her shields read as full, with 99 units and 2 energy tanks in reserve. The subsystems that came with her equipment, like the Grapple Voltage, were also online.

She got up from her kneeling position and looked at the sky. It was night, and the moon was Earth's, but that didn't disprove her earlier hypothesis about this being a fake Sol system or a simulation of some sort. Looking around, she realized she was in a valley of some sort, and the hazard indicator on the left side of her heads-up-display indicated the area was radioactive.

She began to head for what could pass as a trail, one that led out of the depression. Rocky terrain was nothing new to her, and she traversed the radioactive pit without much effort. At least until she saw something that ranked as one of the more disgusting things she'd seen.

It looked like a twisted mix of a man and something else, with six legs that each resembled human arms. The face, if it could be called that, had sunken eyes and three repulsive tendrils coming from where its mouth would be. Tumor-like growths engulfed its back, and its humanoid torso lacked any arms to speak of.

She quickly scanned the creature for later study and began to blast away at it with her Power Beam. The yellow bolts of energy tore away at it bit by bit, but at an agonizingly slow pace. The tormented expression on the abomination's face almost begged for death, and Samus felt obligated to grant that wish out of decency.

The creature lashed at her with its tongues, one of which grabbed her upper left arm. She couldn't tug away at it, so she pointed her Arm Cannon at the monstrosity, charged a shot and fired. The monster's head erupted in a geyser of dark red blood.

This was a more extreme instance of violence that what she was used to. She'd ended thousands of lives, all of them creatures or sapient beings who'd deserved it, and killing came naturally to her. Sometimes her enemies would be reduced to a mist of blood, but that was clean compared to this.

She punted away an intact eyeball that seemed to be staring at her, and walked out of the pit by way of the trail she'd spotted earlier. Exiting the caldera, she looked out at the horizon, slowly spinning about to get a full view.

It was desert all around. Dirt, rocks and the occasional bush were the main features of the landscape. To her east was a tall, fairly narrow mountain. Not much was to her north or south. Gazing west, she saw a massive structure in what seemed to be a city. Lights came from within but what might've been buildings on the outskirts emitted none, for reasons unknown.

But it was a sign of civilization, and her best chance at finding out where she was. She began to march west, watching for any more creatures that could attack her.

After an hour of travelling, during which several bloated insects attacked her and she took a detour southward trying to find a way around a mountain range, she saw smoke in the distance, coming from what her incomplete, but rapidly growing map indicated was a cove. She approached it with haste, assuming the smoke was from a campfire of some sort. Then the cacophony began.

It sounded like small explosions ringing out from over the hill, with shouting and cursing barely audible over the din. Samus crouched and peeked over a cliff, intent on figuring out what was going on.

Below her was a pitched battle. The defenders were dressed in ancient clothing, metal plates and spikes covering the parts of their upper body that weren't bare. They were filthy, primitive-looking, and had decaying bodies hung around the structures. Inside several cages were humans who had clearly been heavily abused by their captors, a conclusion only reinforced by her subsequent scan of them.

She then trained her Scan Visor towards the battle and scanned one of the defenders.

**Morphology: Human Raider**

**Subject is equipped with firearms and explosives of the type used in the 20****th**** and 21****st**** centuries of the human Common Era, albeit in very poor condition. Numerous wounds indicate extensive experience in harsh conditions. Analysis indicates specimen makes heavy usage of recreational drugs, and is malnourished. Imbalance of chemicals in the brain indicates probable mental instability and the presence of sexually transmitted diseases. Probable criminal.**

Scanning the other defenders yielded the same results, and they continued to be cut down by the attackers while inflicting casualties on them. So she scanned the attackers, who were clad in more protective and uniform clothing.

**Morphology: Human Soldier**

**Subject is in good physical condition, and wears armor optimized for use in desert environments. Weapons are firearms and explosives in fair condition. No harmful substances present in their systems, save for residual amounts of alcohol.**

Though the soldiers made an initially successful advance, a charge on their part was followed series of explosions coming from the ground at their feet, and several perished or were severely injured.

Samus felt an urge to aid them. She could tell by instinct alone that the defenders were disgusting human beings, and their behavior coupled with her scan data reinforced that thought. Perhaps they were the lesser of two evils, but she decided to focus on the raiders.

She leapt down from the cliff, somersaulting in the air before landing, and joined the fray. A raider turned to see her and opened fire, his bullets chipping away at her shields before she hit him in the chest with a missile. Another one a few meters away threw a grenade at her, which she outran. The explosive detonated, and caused a massive secondary explosion as an ammo cache burst.

The huntress was caught inside the second blast before she could get clear, and it wiped out nearly two full energy tanks, leaving her with one tank remaining already.

As she stepped from the flames, she saw that there was only one attacker standing, and a dozen defenders. The warrior, who wore a brown trenchcoat and a combination gas mask-helmet with red lenses, didn't falter as the survivors trained their weapons on him. His head twitched just slightly, looking in her direction.

One of the raiders looked behind her, presumably so she could see the flames of the ammo dump, which Samus had just escaped.

"Oh, fuck! We got a tinny!" The female yelped, her eyes now fixed on the orange-clad bounty hunter.

Whatever that meant, it was quite clear it had just made her a higher priority. The raiders did an about-face and began to fire at her. It showed a lack of coordination and thought that they put their backs to an enemy they were more familiar with.

Bullets pounded on her shields, and she entered her Morph Ball, boosting to cover on her right before exiting and firing her Arm Cannon during each brief window of opportunity. The combined firepower of twelve weapons was not to be underestimated, and they chipped away at the corner of the building she hid behind.

Samus activated her X-Ray Visor and observed from safety as the lone warrior efficiently dispatched each of the distracted raiders. The first two each received a fatal shot through the heart, and then one had her skull blown apart. He successfully drew some of their fire and took several rounds to the torso, ignoring them all. A trio of the raiders dropped to further fire, and the warrior rolled to his own cover, reloading his rifle.

Samus switched back to her Combat Visor and hit three of the raiders with a Super Missile. One of remaining three aimed a particularly stout rifle at her and fired a large, subsonic projectile. It still moved too fast for her augmented reflexes to react, and hit her square in the breastplate.

Her shields died as the explosive detonated at point-blank. Knocked flat on her back, she lay there powerless as her suit locked down and attempted to restart. After that, she took several shots from another raider. Theoretically, if her suit ran out of energy then it should have dematerialized, but right now it was out of energy and inexplicably still there. Of course, her current suit had never been run out of energy before, so it was strictly theoretical.

All she felt was pain. She was fully aware of her surroundings, because she'd long been able to simply ignore pain of any level. But this was more intense than almost anything she could remember. The only comparable thing was the feeling of initially being corrupted with phazon on Norion. This worked against her, as she was fully conscious for a torturous experience.

The warrior from earlier appeared behind her attacker and drove a large knife with a red grip into his back with one hand, withdrawing it and then firing a single round from his rifle into the skulls of both of the still-standing wretches.

He moved to free the prisoners she'd seen earlier, and escorted them into the building Samus had hidden behind after checking it, probably to make sure there weren't any raiders who'd hidden during the attack. Afterwards he returned to Samus and knelt down next to her, pulling out a hand-held radio that resembled a black brick with a short antenna and a few knobs and buttons.

"Colonel Moore, Cottonwood Cove secured. The troopers you sent with me are all KIA, and so are all the raiders. Be advised I've secured several civilians, probably victims of physical and sexual abuse. I convinced them to sit tight and gave them a few stimpacks each," The warrior said.

"_I hear you, Hawk. There's a platoon of troopers headed your way, they'll be there inside of ten minutes._"

"Roger…" The warrior looked at Samus. "I have to take care of something, I'll be out of touch for a while." He turned off the radio and slid it under his trenchcoat. He placed the butt of his rifle on the ground near her, his left hand on the handguard.

He touched her abdomen for a moment, then ran his hand around to her lower back and felt around that area as well. She felt some pain each time, and had tried to aim her Arm Cannon at him before he even made physical contact with her, but her Power Suit's lockdown prevented her from moving it more than a millimeter even with all her effort.

"You saved my ass back there. Thanks. It looks like you took a few rounds of .308; not many people can take six of those through the gut and survive. Shit, most kick the bucket after two or three. At least they all have exit wounds, so I won't have to dig 'em out. While the gut is one of the most painful places in the human body to be shot along with the kneecaps, it'll take a while for you to actually die. Of course, if you aren't human then you might be fucked."

He pulled a small device from his coat, one shaped vaguely like a pistol, and grabbed a hold of her arm before pulling the trigger. A sphere of light surrounded them, and the huntress finally passed out.


	2. Ain't That a Kick in the Head?

The new arrival was passed out by the time Hawk reached The Sink. The woman – he assumed it was a woman because of the shape and what parts of the face could be made out through the visor – had taken more punishment than most humans could, and he attributed that to the strange armor she wore.

Upon arriving, he took her inside and strapped her to a table. He'd had a sort of interrogation table put in one of the rooms, which he generally used to restrain captives during interrogations. The only harm they could do was to themselves, if they happened to have cyanide capsules in their teeth like some Enclave personnel had on the east coast, and he hadn't seen any of _those_ in a while.

Of course, it was equally useful as an operating table, and he had plenty of medical skill. The Sink's Auto-Doc was sketchy on its ability to heal through a full-body suit of armor, so he would handle this himself.

With the patient immobilized and unconscious, he cleaned the wounds and examined the damage done to her. Remarkably, there were two layers beneath the metallic armor she wore, and they'd already begun to self-repair, and a closer look revealed that the exterior armor did had begun a self-repair sequence as well. Her flesh however, wouldn't heal completely unless he administered the proper treatment.

He took out a super stimpack and fastened it around the subject's waist, so that the needle would go directly through the skin and not have to pass through any layers that could possibly interfere with a smooth injection. After that, he twisted a small knob on the side of the syringe. While normal stimpacks could be injected all at once without worry, an unregulated dose from a super stimpack could cause harmful side-effects.

He made a quick judgment regarding the proper dosage and adjusted the release valve on the syringe to match it. After thirty seconds, he undid the belt fastening the device to the patient's belly and tossed the item in a receptacle that fortunately didn't have an artificial personality.

The wounds had now healed completely, and the armor layers continued to regenerate. At the current rate, they would be fully repaired within half an hour. It was curious how it did that, but Hawk new better than to ask the Think Tank about it, because they'd have a field day cutting her open and playing with her armor and organs. Dr. Dala concerned him especially in that regard.

"Hey Jefferson, put on some jazz for the next hour, would ya?" He asked from a few rooms away.

He was glad he'd put in that musical database and advanced radio receiver. Now he could get radio from the Mojave to the Capital Wastes, and that database had all kinds of pre-war music. He'd even gone to the trouble of putting it all on holotapes so he could take the music in his Pip-Boy wherever he went.

Still, he preferred that Blind Diode Jefferson play it, because his acoustic refinement algorithms made the sound clearer than anything else he'd heard from a machine.

"_No problem, man!_" The jukebox's artificial personality put on an instrumental track and played it, filling The Sink with music.

Hawk took a seat in the same room as his guest and drew his riot shotgun, loading it with a drum of 4/0 magnum buckshot.

_Better safe than sorry._

He took out a book and read. After a couple hours of sitting and reading, he noticed that the female had begun to stir.

_Good. I've got some questions._

The Ranger stood up and slung the shotgun across his chest, so he'd have quick access to it if necessary, but have both hands free otherwise. He strode over to the possible alien and waved his hand in front of her visor after noting her eyes were open.

"Hey, glad to see you're awake. First things first, can you understand me?"

He got a nod, which was encouraging.

"Alright, are you a human female under there, or am I just talkin' to an androgynous alien? Just nod if it's the first one."

Another nod.

"Okay. You got pretty fucked up back there, so I teleported us here. I fixed your wound up and your suit… Well, it fixed itself, all three layers. Helluva thing. Powered armor?"

A nod.

"No offense, but you don't look like a local. I saw a couple shooting stars a few hours ago, one of those you?"

"And my ship," She answered. She had a slightly husky voice, and spoke with a faintly hostile tone.

"Okay, you can talk. I was beginning to worry all you knew was nodding." He patted his shotgun and pointed it at her. She jerked against the restraints, which were made of Saturnite alloy, to no avail. "I'm gonna undo your restraints and let you walk around, okay? Don't try anything, and I won't have to use this."

Hawk pressed a button, and the clamps holding the woman in place retracted. She sprang up from the table and onto the floor in one fluid motion. She seemed to be looking at a HUD inside her helmet, judging by her eye movement. He just had one overlaid directly upon his vision

He put his left hand forward, to make it easier for what seemed to be the sole hand in his guest's possession. "Most people know me as 'Hawk'. NCR Ranger Captain and Paladin in the Capital Wasteland Brotherhood of Steel."

After some hesitation she grabbed his hand with her own and shook. She had a very firm grip, which he reciprocated. "Samus Aran. Bounty hunter, mercenary."

"Alright. Welcome to The Sink, don't ask me why it's called that." He led her to the central room of the household. "This is the main hub. It's got the Auto-Doc, 'Doc', he doesn't work to well on people in full-body suits of armor, so I didn't let him operate on you. No offense, right Doc?"

"_None taken, Hawk. Pleasure to meet you, Samus,_" The cylindrical apparatus replied.

"Yeah, he's definitely the most normal artificial personality here. We've also got a book chute with a bit of an Orwellian point of view in here, I turned him off for now though. There's the Sink Central Intelligence Unit, I call him 'Cy'."

"_Would sir like me to prepare a drink for him and madam?_"

"I'll have a Four Horsemen. You want anything?"

"No."

"Very good, sir, madam."

Hawk glanced at Samus. "You have no idea what I had to go through to get him to address ladies properly."

"Your drink is ready, sir."

The Ranger removed his helmet and set it on the SCIU, then downed his drink.

He had somewhat long, very thick and slightly messy black-brown hair that went halfway down his neck, and had average volume. His facial hair was a short, full coverage beard that caressed his jawline and wrapped around his lips. His Caucasian skin was tanned from life in the wastes, and he had a horizontal scar an inch above his left eyebrow. His eyes were hazel, and he scanned the room absentmindedly, as though it were routine for him to search every inch of an area. By most people's standards, he was a fairly good-looking man.

"Anyway, I've got a reloading bench and a workbench in here too. There's a room over there where I grow different kinds of edible plants and I cook. Another one has a crazy talking toaster, a pair of couches, and a table. One of the back rooms… Don't go in the one that's closed. And there's my bedroom, which is where you'll stay while I take the couch."

"Why is everything a desert? This isn't the Earth I know," Samus said without prompting.

Hawk looked at her curiously. "Why? Because of a nuclear war 200 years ago, that's why. In the 1950s China became the US's main rival after the Korean War and the first ghouls appeared in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. A hundred years later and sky-high oil prices caused wars over what was left, and the UN disbanded. Late 2077, the bombs dropped. And do you mind if I ask how this isn't the world you know?"

"I got here through a wormhole, investigating a signal while I searched for a pair of missing ships."

"Oh, alternate universe, probably. Best explanation I have for it, and it's not really the strangest thing I've seen or heard in the wastes. Anyway, you think these spaceships went through that wormhole?"

"I _know_ it did," Samus stated resolutely.

"Okay... I've got a Pre-War map of the United States somewhere around here…" He scrounged through a few boxes before triumphantly pulling out a folded sheet of sepia-tinted paper. He laid it out on a table and righted it so that south would face towards them, and they could read it the right way. "On your way down, did you know where they were?"

She eyed the map carefully, and marked her path of descent. She swirled her index finger around an area of the map and tapped it. "Somewhere here."

"The Southwest, huh? That doesn't help much. Arizona's Legion territory. Or it used to be. With Caesar and Legate Lanius dead, they're scattered and disorganized at best. Misogynistic slaver bastards used to control Colorado and New Mexico too. "

"But they're gone. No problem."

"Big problem actually. I don't know about Colorado and New Mexico, but Arizona was fuckin' Grade-A anarchy for a while before Caesar's Legion conquered it according to a buddy of mine. Without them keeping the raiders in check, they moved across the Colorado River and into NCR territory. That place you almost died at? That was a Legion base once."

Hawk sighed.

"Look, you don't know where exactly they are, so you could wander all around without finding them unless you have specifics. On top of that, you need transport and supplies, depending on how far in you go. Wait. You said your ship came down with you, right?"

She nodded.

"Can that thing give you the location of the crashed ship?"

Another nod.

"Good. Find your ship, and we'll find the objective."

"There's no 'we'. I work alone," Samus corrected him coldly.

Hawk poked his left finger into her chestplate, and she raised her weapon to his belly. He in turn aimed his shotgun at her stomach. "Look, normally I'd say the same thing. I work with others occasionally, but for the most part others just slow me down. But you're on a hostile alien world, and from what I can tell you are _way_ less than a hundred percent. I know this place better than you, I have contacts, and I've killed over five thousand humans, ghouls and muties, twice that many creatures and abominations; you ask anybody and they'll either say I'm a big goddamn hero or the deadliest man in the wastes."

He could see the huntress grimace under her helmet, a look of grim realization at her situation. He stepped back and placed his other hand on the handguard of his shotgun to stabilize it, still aiming it at her. "Now, here's the deal. I'm gonna help you get back to peak condition, find your ship, and find the spacemen you're here to save. Understand this though: I'm not your sidekick, and you're not mine. I want you to follow my lead when my experience supersedes yours, and when you know more about something than I do it'll be your lead. Any objections, lady?"

Hawk swore he saw her break a small smile, or at least what parts of her face were visible indicated one.

"On the count of three, we lower our guns. One. Two. Three."

They both lowered their weapons.

"It's two in the morning, so uh, I think it'd be best if we got some shut-eye. Just use my bed, I already said I'd take the couch."

He grabbed his helmet and walked into his living room, and gestured to his bedroom. Samus laid down on the bed and became very still, taking an almost statuesque position, straight as an arrow.

The warrior just put his helmet on the table next to him, and leaned his Survivalist rifle, riot shotgun and grenade launcher against said object. Then he rested his head on the armrest of the couch and dozed off. That was the first sleep he'd gotten in more than two days

He woke up at eight. He got up, stretched, and holstered his weapons. The rifle and grenade launcher were slung across his back, and the shotgun he kept slung across his chest. He put on his Ranger combat helmet and went into the main room.

There, he began to load 12.7mm bullets for his rifle using his reloading bench. He had enough materials to make over a hundred, and he made them all in about half an hour. Then he bought some more from The Sink's Central Intelligence Unit. He spent another ten minutes loading all the ammunition into magazines and then storing them in his Pip-Boy. It was more convenient to simply carry things on his person, but the time-consuming nature of storing things in the device and withdrawing them was offset by the sheer capacity for storage.

After he ate a breakfast of Sugar Bombs, fruit, and gecko bacon, he heard a door open from the direction of his room.

"Shit," He muttered.

The Ranger strode over to the back room he'd specifically told Samus not to go into, and found himself with the barrel of her arm-gun pointed at him for the second time.

"Mind telling me whose those are?"

She pointed to the beating human heart and the human spine stored in bio med gel, and the cybernetic brain he'd replaced with his original one. Her weapon was still pointed at him, and her visage was one of cold fury from what he could see through her emerald visor.

"Those are mine."

She tipped her head back incredulously. "Who did they belong to before?"

"Me. My heart and spine are replaced with advanced technology. Hell, I've got a whole load of implants in my body. My brain has several chips and such in it. Three years ago I was shot twice in the head and buried alive in a shallow grave. Even then, I didn't get any implants to replace damaged tissue for a year. Five years ago, I had a chunk of my brain cut out in a failed attempt to lobotomize me. I've been shot, shocked, stabbed, slashed, poisoned, perforated, battered, burned, blown up and bludgeoned more times than I'd care to count. I'd guess that armor of yours has protected you from physical harm for the most part, but I haven't been so lucky."

Samus lowered her weapon. "You'd be right."

"Breakfast?" He changed the subject.

She just tapped her helmet, and he inferred that it had some method of supplying nutrition without the need for removal.

He grabbed a copy of a book from the table next to where he'd slept: "The Wasteland Survival Guide" the title said.

"Required reading before we go," He said.

She put her finger to the side of her helmet and looked at the tome for a moment, and then semi-translucent pages appeared on the inside of her visor in rapid succession.

"Done."

"I won't ask. If I took you back to the region you crashed in, could you find your ship?"

"Yes."

He pulled out his Transportalponder and stood next to Samus before pulling the trigger. In a flash of light, they both disappeared.

A moment later, they were in the decayed parking lot of a drive-in movie theater. In the middle of the space was a crashed satellite, and the sun was just beginning to creep over the horizon..

"Welcome to the Mojave Wasteland."

A/N: For the record, Samus is voiced by Jennifer Hale, her voice actress in the Prime series, in this story. She also voiced female Commander Shepard in the _Mass Effect_ series, Naomi Hunter in the _Metal Gear Solid _ series, and Commander Sarah Palmer in _Halo 4_, to name a few of her roles.


	3. Ground Rules

"Welcome to the Mojave Wasteland," Hawk announced with some flair. He quickly brought up his left wrist, and glanced at a device mounted on it.

Samus Aran switched visor modes and scanned the device.

**Technology: Pip-Boy 3000**

**The Pip-Boy functions as a multi-purpose tool. It possesses the capability to receive a wide range of conventional radio transmissions, store data, function as a map, and perform several other duties. It is also able to store objects in an unknown storage medium, with limits based on mass. The device is extremely durable, capable of resisting even the strongest known weapons for the Power Suit without issue.**

**Device is currently displaying a map of the region, labeled as "Mojave Wasteland." Map integrated into navigation suite.**

She decided to scan her "escort" next, to see what information she could glean.

**Morphology: Post-Human Warrior**

**Name: ?Hawk?**

**Subject is a post-human male clad in a highly resistant set of armor, capable of blocking most small arms fire. Weaponry is primarily projectile-based and includes a ten-shot semi-automatic magazine-fed rifle chambered in 12.7x40mm, a 40x46mm four-shot pump-action tube-fed explosive projectile launcher, a drum-fed twelve-shot 18.5mm semi-automatic shotgun, and an 11.43x23mm seven-shot magazine-fed semi-automatic pistol currently fitted with a sound suppressor.**

**The subject possesses numerous mechanical augmentations to his body, and a number of beneficial mutations that have adapted him to life in the wastes. Without clothing or armor of any sort, the subject has an innate damage resistance equivalent to a set of Federation Police-issue armor. However, this layer of protection is primarily subdermal, meaning that his flesh is of similar resistance to that which a normal human male in his condition would have. **

**One network of implants seems aimed to increase strength, perception, endurance, charisma, intelligence and "luck" (via a probability matrix), and does so successfully. Another set of implants enables rapid healing and increased reaction times, as well as resistance to poisoning. The spine and heart have been replaced altogether, and the skeleton has been reinforced while simultaneously improving its healing ability.**

**Recommend extreme caution be taken in the event that hostilities break out between Hawk and Samus Aran. Level of experience in combat is believed to be extremely high. Assume subject has combat mastery.**

Not many things scared Samus, and those that did normally died as she buried that fear deep down during combat with them. For once, it was an "ally" that sent shivers down her spine. Between the weapons, armor and augmentations he had, he was seemingly as much a threat to her in her current state as Dark Samus had been every time she fought that abomination.

But this time, she was dealing with a person who she had no idea how to predict, with unique abilities and an extreme version of a "home-field advantage". What was worse, for all she knew he had even more dangerous gear and abilities than what her scan indicated.

Of course, Samus had her own advantages, ones that Hawk likely wouldn't discover unless she let him. Combined with her quiet and solitary nature, she'd at least be able to remain an enigma to him. She'd been betrayed and given numerous raw deals before, and there wasn't really anybody she trusted after a decade of work in the mercenary and bounty hunting field.

The huntress had a feeling that in a dangerous and unknown place like this, with a reduced ability to resist damage, the Scan Visor would be a vital asset. In fact, every tool she had was a potential boon in this alternate Earth. And maybe she'd find some interesting new upgrades for her suit to further advance her abilities.

"Alright. We'll head to Primm, which is just a few minutes northwest of here. From there we'll head north along the I-15, then head off towards Goodsprings. We can stay there a day or two if we have to."

He led his guest through a town, which was probably the "Primm" he'd mentioned. A few sizable buildings and a few small ones populated the settlement, all equally decrepit. Almost all the paint had peeled, and they all had chunks of the outer construction missing. The skeletons of the structures were showing in places, and they looked ill-maintained in general.

The inhabitants were dressed in dirty, archaic farm clothes for the most part. Even though their clothes showed a variety of colors, they were all faded or filthy enough to seem dull. Some of them wore tan uniforms identical to those of the soldiers she'd seen last night, so she assumed they were members of the same faction.

All of them gawked at her more or less, and she realized how gaudy the colors of her Varia Suit were here. She was used to working in hostile environments, but not ones that were inhabited by sapient beings. At about 2 meters, or six feet three inches tall either with or without her suit, she was a bit taller than most of the men there. Her companion was a couple inches taller than her.

It then occurred that because this was an alternate Earth, in the remnants of the United States, they'd use the customary system of measurement most of the time, which was identical to the imperial system in most regards. She'd have to remember to convert metric units to customary when needed.

Samus' years of training as a warrior by the Chozo, combined with a decade of field experience, meant that she was very aware of her surroundings, and how alert others were. Perhaps that was why she was uncomfortable here, with almost every set of eyes pointed in her direction.

As they left the town and continued on northward, Hawk began to speak.

"I just wanna state that the Mojave is the most civilized region I've ever been in. Sure it's extremely dangerous, but the rule of law and the existence of a government keeps it much more ordered than other places I've been. Most other places are either barely inhabited or inhabited by hostile locals. Sometimes both, and that's not counting the wildlife."

"I'm a lot more used to that," She said. "I prefer to know who I'm working with. You mind?"

"I'm flattered. Literally _nobody_ has asked about me before."

"Lucky me. Could you get on with it?"

"Fine. I was raised in Vault 101, in the Capital Wasteland. Lived there from age one to age nineteen."

"Vault?"

"A fallout shelter built before the war to preserve those who reserved a place inside. They were designed to hold up to 1000 occupants, or at least some were, and they were all advertised as being intended to unseal themselves 20 years after being sealed. A lot of them had unique conditions however; I found out in an Enclave log they were designed as social experiments. There were about twenty control vaults that functioned exactly as claimed. There are six vaults in this region. Want me to give you an overview?"

"Sure." It couldn't hurt for her to get a better idea of her surroundings.

"Vault 3 was supposed to be a control vault, but the residents wanted to keep it sealed for a lot longer than 20 years. They eventually got taken over by a group of particularly drug-addled raiders a few years before I came here, after they seeked help for a flooding problem; all the inhabitants died and the Fiends took over and got a shitload of energy weapons."

"Vault 11 was designed with a very unique internal government. The Overseer was elected every year, instead of selected for life. At the end of their term, they would have to be sacrificed in a special chamber or automated systems would kill everyone inside the Vault, which was inescapable. Voting blocs formed, and they would encourage citizens to vote for the other faction's leader. 'Steve eats babies, vote for Steve!', that kinda shit. Eventually, a twisted and cruel series of events led to a civil war. When only five people remained, they decided to pick human dignity, and not sacrifice another person. An automated message informed them that there never really was an automated kill system, and opened the door to the exit. After finding out that all the death was for nothing, four of the five survivors committed suicide. It was a test of morality versus self-preservation, I suppose."

That was one of the single cruelest things Samus had ever heard of. Space Pirates were barbarians with advanced weaponry, but their brutality wasn't so psychological and mind-breaking. They were a race with barbarism in their blood, and she hated every single one of them. Yes, their experiments had driven some insane and their ethics were almost non-existent, but this was an evil game, a test that cost human lives for the advancement of psychology. It was a different kind of evil.

"Vault 19 was filled with people who had a history of paranoia. It was separated into two sides: red and blue, with two Overseers and one of all the vital machines and facilities. Each night at the exact same time, the ventilation ducts would make a peculiar humming noise, which was actually just nothing. Each side became extremely suspicious of the other. I don't know what happened in the end, I guess they all just left when the Vault door opened."

"Vault 21was pretty benign. All residents were compulsive gamblers, all disputes were settled by games of chance like blackjack and poker. It got along just fine until Mr. House came in, flooded a part of it he evacuated with cement, and turned the rest into a hotel."

"Vault 22 had people experimenting with some fancy biotech. A weird spore ended up infecting people, turning them into monsters. They were alive, but feral and turned into some bastardization of plant and animal."

"Vault 34 was given a vastly overstocked and unlocked armory, a full suite of recreational facilities, and was populated entirely by gun-nuts. But it became overpopulated, and the Overseer put a lock on the armory. After a large group of them became dissatisfied with being unable to use guns, said group left. They headed to Nellis Air Force Base and are known today as the Boomers. The ones who stayed behind suffered a series of accidents throughout the Vault, which became flooded and radioactive, and the door was unfortunately sealed shut."

Shortly after he finished, he stopped and drew his grenade launcher, then looked around. Samus likewise raised her Arm Cannon and began to look about, alarmed by her escort's sudden shift in behavior, but aware that he was searching for something.

"I heard gunfire." He paused for a moment before speaking again. "To the north, follow me."

He began to run towards what seemed to be an obelisk in the distance, and his guest followed.

"I don't recognize the report," He said as he ran up a hill.

Samus took a quicker route over the same hill, jumping onto rock formations and using them as oversized stairs. "I do."

"Enlighten me." Hawk slid down the other side of the hill.

"Galactic Federation Marine Corps standard-issue weapon. M41A2 pulse rifle," She answered after she somersaulted downhill, then resumed running. "Same as they've been using for twenty years."

Samus and her escort were within sight of the weapons fire just moments later. A squad of Federation Marines were fending off a pair of enormous scorpions, each easily the size of a hovercar. The Ranger fired a shell from his grenade launcher, which spiraled through the air and landed between the two creatures, bursting and releasing a blast of green energy. He racked a new round into the chamber and fired again, and again, and again.

Samus fired a pair of missiles at each of the beasts, which ended up being the final blows as her companion reloaded his weapon. The beasts had fallen almost as quickly as they appeared. She noticed a pair of golden orbs floating above the corpses, and charged her Power Beam to suck the energy capsules in.

The capsules were more of a feature of her Power Suit than they were a phenomenon. When she killed an enemy their life-force energy – the very same energy that Metroids fed on – was graphically represented to her as a sort of capsule-like object if it was recoverable. The tractor beam function of her Beam weapons was a deliberate design function on the Chozo's part and sucked in such energy efficiently. Missiles, Power Bombs and other ammunition-based weapons were fed by the same sort of principle, but with minute amounts of certain elements being used to fuel nanofactories within her suit that produced the munitions.

As she walked towards the Federation Marines, her suit notified her that it had fully developed a method of staying in a physical form in absence of energy used to power her shields, as a result of subroutines she'd retained from her Light Suit.

_Old news now._

Hawk was tending to one of the soldiers, who'd been stung in the leg by one of the scorpions. The other three kept their weapons trained on him, only willing to let him help because he'd provided covering fire for them.

"Oh God, oh God, oh God!" The injured grunt moaned.

"Stow the bellyaching soldier, remember you're a leatherneck!" The Ranger told him. "Take off your helmet, drink this. You're a human, so I know it'll neutralize the poison." He held out a small gourd with a cork in the top, which he popped out.

"Screw you, how do I know that won't kill me?"

"Because if you don't that Giant Radscorpion's venom _will_ in two minutes, jackass!"

The trooper reluctantly removed his helmet and took the drink, downing it all in a few seconds. In a few more, he relaxed as the antivenom took effect. He put his helmet on a few moments after that and got to his feet, slightly shaky.

"Alright, Miss Aran here tells me you're Galactic Federation Marines. Apparently, she was sent here to find a pair of missing ships. As a Ranger of the New California Republic, I'd like to welcome you to the Mojave Wasteland."

The body language of the four of them was of reassurance when they heard Samus' name, and then unease when they heard the rest.

"C'mon, Goodsprings is a couple hundred yards west of here. On me."

The six of them hiked for ten minutes before reaching the town.

"Damn, it looks like a wild west town," One of the marines noted.

"I'm taking you all to Doc Mitchell's place. He's the guy who got me back on my feet after I got two in the head and was buried alive in a shallow grave."

He took them all to a house on top of a hill and knocked on the door.

"Yeah, come on in," A gravelly voice answered. "It's unlocked."

He opened the door and motioned for his armored entourage to follow him in.

"It's Hawk, I got a few friends with me."

"Sheesh, sounds like they're carryin' Brahmin on their backs," The elderly man said without turning to face his guests. When he turned, his jaw dropped. "Oh no. Not after last time, I'm still gettin' heat for those Brotherhood types you had me help out a few months back. I'll let one of 'em stay with you, the rest can stay in the old gas station."

"Okay, Doc. Marines, you're setting up camp a couple minutes outside of town, I'll take you there. Samus, I want Doc Mitchell to do a test on you, just some agree-disagree, word association, inkblots. If you fell from the sky, you might be a bit rattled and not realize it yet. Just humor me."

The Ranger led the four jarheads out of the house, and shut the door behind him.

"Alright Mr. uh…"

"_Miss_ Aran."

"Okay then. Just take a seat on that couch right there."

The huntress did as she was told and relaxed on the seat.

"I'm gonna start with some word association. Dog."

"Guard."

"House."

"Invaded."

"Night."

"Surprise."

"Bandit."

"Kill."

"Mother."

Samus paused for a moment. She hardly remembered her own mother, and being raised by the Chozo she had multiple maternal and paternal figures, but only one strong parental figure. Grey Voice was the closest thing she'd had to a father, but she had nothing like a mother. "Wish."

"Okay, I've got a few statements. I want you to tell me how much you agree or disagree with 'em."

She nodded.

"Conflict just ain't in my nature."

"Strongly disagree."

"I ain't given to relyin' on others for support."

"Strongly agree."

"I'm always fixin' to be the center of attention."

"Disagree."

"I'm slow to embrace new ideas."

"Disagree"

"I charge in to deal with my problems head on."

"Disagree."

"Good, we're almost done here. Now I'm gonna show you some inkblots, and I want you to tell me what you see."

She nodded again.

"A monster's face… A starfighter… A light shining in darkness…"

Doc Mitchell finished writing on his clipboard and looked up at her with a pleasant smile. "And that's all she wrote. Good news, not much crazy in you. Probably more of that in the guy who brought you here."

The front door opened and shut, the footsteps clearly indicating that the person who'd just come in was not wearing a set of powered armor. The pacing of the gait matched that of a fairly tall human male.

"Speak of the devil," Mitchell chuckled.

"Can I talk to you in private?"

"Sure."

The two of them entered a room and closed a pair of doors, probably to create a dead zone between them and the guest. They were keeping secrets, and Samus had plenty of those kept from her. She strongly suspected "Hawk" wasn't even her guide's real name.

But with nothing more than some wooden walls between her and the secret meeting, it would be easy to eavesdrop. Her Echo Visor had both active and passive modes, and all she had to do was lock onto the two men and she could listen in.

"_Doc, I just wanna know what I'm dealing with. I've heard the saying 'keep your friends close and your enemies closer', but I'm not even sure which one she is,_" Hawk whispered.

"_Fine, but this is only because I owe you_. _This ain't like one of the BC evaluations you have me run._"

"_I promise this is the only time I'll ask you to break doctor-patient confidentiality_."

"_Okay. Well she's a fighter, a loner, and a crafty one too; she seems sharp as a deathclaw's tooth. And that second Vit-O-Matic sensor you set up in the sofa for assessin' your BC people got a reading_."

"_What'd she get?_"

"_More'n most people have, and we know the armor ain't factoring in. 7-8-8-4-6-9-6._"

"_Damn, that's really good_."

She couldn't make out the rest because they turned on a faucet, drowning out their voices.

"_Thanks Doc._"

The two of them returned to the previous room, and Samus returned to her Combat Visor. And just in time for her to get a quartet of notifications on her HUD.

**High-temperature anomaly nearby. Beacon online.**

**Unusual energy spectrum located. Beacon online.**

**Matter-antimatter interaction detected. Beacon online.**

**High-frequency energy signature found. Beacon online.**

Samus raised her Arm Cannon and pointed it to her side, and a holographic projection of the Mojave appeared from the top of it, an extremely pale monochromatic blue.

"Well, that looks mighty handy," Mitchell remarked.

"What're those question marks?" Hawk asked.

"Some of my missing Arm Cannon modules, probably."

The Ranger stepped closer to the projection. "So that's what that thing's called. Could you flip the hologram for me, let me get a look at it?"

She opted to simply reorient her Arm Cannon so they could all see the map from its proper angle.

"There's one in the ruins, Fiend territory," Hawk said. He touched the symbol and was startled when it displayed information on the target. "Unusual energy spectrum, huh?"

He tapped each of the other marked locations, reading out the location of each.

"High-temp anomaly is in the Cottonwood Crater. Matter-antimatter interaction in Searchlight. High-frequency energy signature on top of Black Mountain. That just covers a small part of the Mojave if you connect the dots. I say we hit the South Vegas Ruins first, then Black Mountain, Searchlight, and Cottonwood Crater in that order. That way we hit the closest one first and work our way south-by-southeast."

Samus nodded agreement.

"Those marines were in an escape pod from the _GFS Ragnarok_, a destroyer. They think it crashed west of the Mojave, but they don't know. They do know that a few other escape pods landed in the Mojave though, so they want us to keep an eye out for any other jarheads. Their pod crashed in a sandstorm at night, and they headed northwest out of a valley. Probably landed in Hidden Valley. If we stop there, do you think you could find a way to detect more of them?"

"Not unless I had a frequency to home in on. Otherwise I'll just be able to detect a signal from short-ranges."

"Got it. The marines are staying in that gas station for now and if we find more we'll send them to places I know are safe. Doc, can you keep those boys supplied, get 'em a HAM radio? Tell 'em to use 140.85 for general communications."

"I can do that."

"Good. I might have a friend come to help out if I can, but don't get too hopeful."

"Alright. See ya around."

Hawk and Samus nodded and headed out and began to travel northwest. After half an hour of silent travel, the huntress spoke up.

"So your suit can just find stuff for you?"

"Some things."

"That does sound useful."

"You never told me about Vault 101." She wanted to keep Hawk talking, partly to kill time and partly to learn more about him. The more she knew about him, the more she could understand him. That'd make him less of a threat.

"Oh yeah, got sidetracked. Vault 101 was supposed to be sealed indefinitely, but it wasn't. A few exploration teams went out a few decades ago, and my dad came in with me within the first year of my life. I thought I was born in the Vault, and that he was too. Being born outside the Vault explains why my mother died after giving birth to me. I grew up with one friend, the Overseer's daughter, Amata. I was constantly bullied until age 19. On that birthday, my dad left the Vault without telling anybody."

"And?"

"And the Overseer went crazy, security killed my dad's assistant and best friend, Jonas; I'd known him since I was a kid. Amata woke me up and told me what happened, gave me a gun and told me to get out as fast as I could. I had to kill a bunch of security guards on the way out, and escaping was difficult."

He told Samus about what he'd done on his way out, the people he helped and the things he did outside the Vault.

"I know what you're doing. You're trying to get a read on me, learn about me so you can predict my actions better, and if we end up fighting you have a psychological advantage because you know how I think and I don't know shit about you."

"And you gave me insight anyway."

"I didn't give you shit. I can tell you the rest and you won't get much more. So why tell you anything at all? Because you asked, and the information I'm giving you doesn't contain anything you can use against me. Your curiosity is satisfied, I don't lose anything. It's a win-win."

"Only a draw for you."

"Which by the standards of my life is a win. And I expect a _quid_ _pro_ _quo_ on this, so you owe me your story later. Do you want me to go on knowing that?"

"We segment it. You give me your first half now, my first later, your second half after, my second last. Deal?"

"Deal."

He went up to Project Purity, describing helplessly watching his father die.

"I considered killing myself after that, because I had nothing to keep me going. Then as I heard reports of what the Enclave was doing, I decided what I'd do from then on. I realized that what my father wanted more than anything was to help the people of the wasteland, and that I should carry on his will. I became the Lone Wanderer, the Hawk, a symbol of hope to those in need and a specter of fear to the unjust."

He went on to describe saving Vault 101 and being exiled from it by his only friend, and his adventures throughout the Capital Wasteland. How he almost died to bring clean water to the wastes, and finished off much of the Enclave. His quests through slave cities, swamps and space.

Hawk drew his shotgun from its holster behind his waist. He then switched magazines and cycled the bolt, catching the ejected shell and putting it into one of his pockets.

He pointed at the ruins ahead, and one of the wrecked signs hanging on a semi-collapsed building.

"Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas."


	4. Anything Goes

Hawk pulled himself up the unintentional walls of the ruins, pulling Samus with him and motioning for her to stay low. They were inside a collapsed building, stalking through to find an exit on the other side.

He found a window big enough for either of them to fit through, and motioned for her to stop. He pulled out a pair of binoculars and surveyed the area.

There were raiders, lots of them. Fiends everywhere, armed with energy weapons and crude melee weapons. He could see a few of them circled around a fire passing around a Jet inhaler, and one of them was using the methamphetamine with Psycho.

"Looks like a dozen of them out there. Four of 'em taking hits of Jet; they'll be faster moving, but not faster reacting, and they'll be less lucid. One of them looks like she's having a bad trip."

He set down his binoculars and grabbed his grenade launcher. He pumped the weapon four times to eject the shells, which all had glowing green in place of copper and silvery cases instead of brass. Noticing Samus looking at them, he pocketed them.

"Those were plasma shells. More damaging than a regular 40mm, but a smaller radius. Pulse ones have a glowing blue tip, and they're only good against powered armor and robots." He pulled out four rounds with red tips. "Incendiaries have less explosive power, but they set anybody in the blast on fire, they're better against lightly armored enemies." He loaded the first shell and racked the pump forwards, then loaded the other three. He set the weapon on the floor, facing towards the enemy, and put his shotgun back into its holster on his lower back.

"We'll attack at dusk?" Samus asked.

"Yeah."

Hawk tried to read her, but her body language was hard to understand, and most of what he knew about her was from Doc Mitchell's psych eval.

_She's an orphan, parents probably killed in an attack of some sort when she was very young. That explains her attitude somewhat._

"What's your story?" He asked.

"Focus on the objective," She answered, irritated.

"We've got a couple hours 'til sundown, and we had a deal."

Samus was silent for a few minutes, and by the time she responded, her companion was surprised that she hadn't actually moved on to another train of thought.

"...Fine. I was born on the colony K-2L. When I was four, the colony was attacked by Space Pirates, who killed everyone except me. A group of Chozo responded to the distress signal and arrived too late. They found me and raised me to be a warrior, taught me their ways; without my suit I can outmaneuver almost anything because of my training, and because they put some of their DNA in me. This Power Suit is their technology modified for my physiology. I'm the top-rated bounty hunter in the galaxy. _My_ galaxy at least."

"You have alien DNA in you? Like, you're physically part-alien?"

"No, it's only affected my abilities. That, and the suit beneath my Power Suit essentially removes everything on my skin, so I don't have any places foreign contaminants can hide. Apart from my size, which is probably the result of my Chozo DNA, I look like a normal human female."

"Huh. What are the Space Pirates like?"

"Arrogant, cruel, and technologically advanced. They think they're a race fit to rule everything, but they're just barbarians to each other and other species. No matter how advanced they get they'll always be the same barbarians. As for a physical description, they frequently alter their bodies on a genetic level, leading to a variety of shapes and sizes, so they don't have a single appearance. They're always arthropod-like and they're normally a de- a foot taller than you."

"Sound like Super Mutants to me, as far as the size and 'master race' mentality. 'Course, not all of them are bad, most reformed after the Master died. East coast breed is mostly barbarians though. How about these Chozo, they a warrior race?"

"Not entirely. They _were_ some of the best out there, especially combined with their mastery of technology and general brilliance, but their extreme longevity played havoc with their reproductive abilities, and their numbers declined; they renounced violence in any form past pure defense, so if their space had been invaded they would've driven the invaders out and held, not going a centi- An inch over the line. They left their mark on dozens of species and hundreds of worlds, but they disappeared not long after I left them. They were like bipedal hawks, nine feet tall." She narrowed her eyes beneath her helmet. "That's not a compliment."

"I didn't think it was. You miss them?"

"The Chozo? Sometimes. The closest people I had to friends were in the Galactic Federation, and they both died a few years ago. Like I always say, friends are a luxury… Do you ever miss Amata?"

"Not anymore. Before I left the Capital Wasteland, I tried to enter Vault 101. They'd begun to interact with the outside world after I helped a peaceful transfer of power from the previous Overseer to Amata a few years prior; after that she'd banished me from the Vault. Some Brotherhood of Steel Knights helped to guard the entrance. I got past the vault door, but the security said I wasn't allowed on the premises. I stormed past them, even took a few bullets on my way to see Amata, just to say goodbye to her. When I got to her office, we argued. Not only was I not allowed in my home of eighteen years, but I was supposed to be kept away. She claimed I was too dangerous to be inside the Vault, and I pointed to the bulletholes in my armor and told her I hadn't even returned fire. We fought, and eventually I told her if Vault 101 ever needed my help I'd die before I did that. I stormed out and never came back."

"What can you tell me about what we're facing now?"

"Fiends. Even by raider standards they're heavy drug users. They've got better weapons than most raiders, only matched by the ones coming in from Arizona. Of course, those guys had firearms. These guys have low to medium-grade energy weapons."

"If energy weapons can get into the hands of junkies, then they're common enough to replace firearms completely. Why use firearms when a superior solution is available?"

Hawk chuckled. "Because there's trade-offs between them. Energy weapons are generally less durable, and they're less common than guns. They use a more narrow range of ammunition, which eases logistics, but the ammo types are less varied and more expensive. Laser weapons are accurate, have an okay punch, and a killshot might turn someone into ash. Plasma is way stronger and killshots can turn a man into glowing green goo, but the shots travel a bit slow compared to bullets or the insta-hit you get with lasers, and it's the only type of EW that has a kick. Incendiary weapons are pretty self-explanatory; flamethrowers, incinerators, flare guns. There are a few other types of EWs, but those are the three main types."

"So you use regular firearms because they're more convenient?"

"Yeah, Reliability and ease of finding ammunition and replacement parts are a few reasons, but I'm good enough at jury-rigging weapons, hand-loading and recycling EW ammunition that those don't matter as much. I really just prefer them though. Plasmas aren't much good past medium-range unless you can lead a target extremely well and-or they won't dodge it. Lasers don't pack much punch, and focus more on putting moderately-damaging shots on target. Flame weaponry is kinda situational, but I always carry a flare gun."

Hawk crawled back over to the window and lay flat on his belly. He grabbed his binoculars and gazed out at the unsuspecting raiders below.

"Samus, how far are we from this 'unusual energy spectrum'?"

After a brief pause, she answered him. "A hundred-fifty yards. Looks like it's underground."

"Got it." He tucked the binoculars back into his pocket and rose to a crouch, picking up his grenade launcher. "It's dark enough, let's move."

Hawk leapt from the window and landed quietly, a small cloud of dust rising around him. Samus jumped and landed without any sound whatsoever, then dashed to cover. He followed, and pressed himself against the wall. Between them was a toolbox marked "Jon-Jon's stash".

"One comin' back here for that stash next to you. Another one following him." He placed his hand on a dark red grip, then pulled out a worn bowie knife. "Hide."

The Ranger hid at the edge of the corner and watched the pair of red dots on his compass come towards him. When the first raider came around, he grabbed him and used him as a human shield, then put a shot from his suppressed M1911 in the other's left eye before he could make a peep. His insurance policy no longer needed, he snapped the man's neck with his left arm, wrapping it around his head to grab the back and twisting. He then slid out his current magazine and swapped it for a new one, placing the old one in a pocket.

Samus cocked her head at him, and he gave her a thumbs-up to signal it was clear to move. She moved next to him held a finger to her helmet for a moment.

"One sleeping in the next building," She whispered.

He holstered his pistol and drew his trusty bowie knife, Blood-Nap. From there he dashed and rolled to cover behind his target building. Creeping inside, he placed his left hand over the napper's mouth, then drove the blade deep into his throat. He followed with a stab deep into his chest cavity, which killed him before he could bleed to death.

Hawk cleaned the blood off of his blade, using the bed to wipe the hot liquid off. He exited and moved back to Samus.

"Using human shields? Killing enemies in their sleep?" She asked him. "I thought you were supposed to be a hero or something."

"Being a good guy doesn't mean you have to fight by some antiquated combat etiquette. If you can kill a bad guy before he even knows you exist or deny him a chance to harm to anyone else, then that's what you should do. Fair fights aren't common, and I intend to keep that trend going. Peace through superior firepower."

"Not judging. I'm glad to see someone who has common sense. Maybe you do have as many kills as you say."

"Well, that number's just the ones I've killed personally. Sabotage-related kills don't register on my Pip-Boy for some reason. Still, the number's dead-on accurate." He peeked around a corner, crouched. "Okay, on my mark, we go in and take 'em out." He pulled his grenade launcher from his back and aimed it at a cluster of four raiders. She raised her Arm Cannon, which altered its shape to become wider, and violet energy began to flow across the exposed parts of the interior.

"Now," He said. A few pounds of pressure on the trigger and the weapon discharged, launching a large subsonic projectile which landed near a campfire. It burst, sending a napalm adherent over a small radius and igniting the flesh and clothing of four unfortunate raiders. They panicked and began rolling on the ground to no avail.

He pumped the weapon just as Samus jumped over him and fired a strange energy weapon at another raider responding to the attack. A trio of beams travelling in a sine curve, all on the same trajectory and all the same violet as the weapon they'd come from, headed for the target. The raider side-strafed them with fire from a laser RCW, and hit Hawk with a few of the shots, though he hardly even flinched, simply changing to his rifle. The undulating beams altered their path to hit the target, and stunned her long enough for two more shots from the beam to hit him.

Samus rushed out and Hawk followed, noticing a sphere of purple energy forming at the muzzle of her weapon, and electricity sparking across it. She pointed it at a target clad in metal armor and fired. The ball of electricity hit the emaciated female's metal breastplate and shot voltage all over her body, jumping to the other plates through the air. She fell to the ground bleeding and spasming madly.

For his part the Ranger fired his rifle at a trio of raiders, each requiring a single shot to take down. He stomped his boot on the neck of the woman Samus had electrocuted to euthanize her, and subconsciously marveled at having only taken around a dozen hits from laser weaponry so far. He turned around to see the huntress finish off the rest in around thirteen seconds.

A streak of blue light came from the muzzle of her Arm Cannon, which had retracted the tip to widen the passage. The streak homed in on a raider firing from atop a building and exploded with force that seemed roughly equivalent to a normal fragmentation grenade.

She then changed her weapon to a configuration that was taller, as opposed to the neat roundness it normally had or the wide configuration of her electrical weapon. A sphere of white energy coalesced at the tip, and what looked like ice spread over the front of the weapon. Hawk had only seen ice in pictures and books, and found some in Mothership Zeta and Jacobstown, so his curiosity was piqued. She braced the gun with her left hand and fired, loosing a burst of energy that impacted at the feet of the remaining raiders. The matter spread all over the ground and crept up their bodies from the bottom, encasing them in solid ice.

Hawk strolled up, his weapons all reloaded and holstered, and gazed at the statues she'd made. He roundhouse kicked one in the chest, shattering it. A left hook knocked the head off another, and a gut punch went clean through a third.

"I'm impressed, you kicked their asses there, Samus," He said.

"You got more than me, so consider the feeling mutual. This way." Samus motioned to a point further ahead. After tapping her helmet for a second and looking around, she tapped the same spot again. "It's clear, nothing on my X-Ray or Thermal Visor." She headed onward and her guide followed.

"So weapon-wise you've got a yellow energy weapon, a homing missile launcher, that heavier non-homing one you used on those giant radscorpions earlier, that shock weapon and that ice gun."

"Power Beam, Missile, Super Missile, Wave Beam, and the Ice Beam, respectively. I can charge up most beams, like you saw, and also use some of them in combination with missiles for increased effects, like the 'Ice Spreader' combo you saw earlier. And for the record, the Super Missile just doesn't home in on nimble enemies very well."

The two of them stopped at a small sewage pipe.

"We're here," She stated. "Only way down is through this pipe. Only a bit more than a meter across." Without warning, she rolled into a ball about a yard wide, the same orange-gold hue as her armor, and that emitted a soft blue glow from within.

The ball travelled a few yards further before something blocked its path. Before he could even say anything, a burst of blue energy shattered the obstacle. Hawk found himself with nothing to do but wait, so he knelt next to the pipe, shielding himself from view.

A few minutes later, the ball rolled back out, and uncurled to reveal Samus was fine.

"The fuck was that?"

"Morph Ball, and the Morph Ball Bombs. Don't ask how it works, because it goes way past the knowledge of Federation eggheads, and past mine too."

"Hmph. Fine by me. Mind telling me what you found?"

"That 'unusual energy signature' was the Hunter package. It's a collection of six weapons – all ammunition-based – that I found in the Alimbic Cluster. I'll need to recover more ammunition for them, but I can do that from any dead body. All you need to know is that one of those signatures is out of the way."

"High-freeq energy sig, here we come. And a word of advice; if you see a shimmer in the air in the Black Mountain area, unload into it. Are you ready to go, or do you wanna rest?"

"Let's move."

"Good, I hate waiting for other people to sleep."

The duo exited the ruins and headed south, past a highway and towards a large mountain. The yellow-lit areas on Samus' Arm Cannon flashed a variety of different colors before returning to their original color. If the way that the different beams he'd already seen changed her weapon was universal, then she was simply switching through her re-acquired weaponry. She settled back on her "Power Beam," as she'd called it earlier.

As soon as they neared the Long 15, they followed it south for an hour. On Hawk's lead, they took a side path to the east.

"Alright, a contact of mine lives in a shack nearby. Don't shoot him."

He led her to a small lean-to at the foot of the mountain, and saw her raise her Arm Cannon to fire.


	5. Cutting-Edge Technology

As soon as she saw the hulking green brute behind Hawk, she raised her weapon instinctively, switching to the Volt Driver as she did so. The orange and yellow lights on her Arm Cannon switched to a lime-green hue, and she tightened her finger on the trigger.

The brute saw her do this, and reached for a large metal hammer, while Hawk jumped between them and raised his hands at both of them.

"Both of you, cool it! Samus, this is my contact, so lower your goddamn weapon."

Warily, she did as she was told. The hulk dropped his hammer, but gazed suspiciously at her.

"He's got some nice armor. Does this spaceman want something from those meteoroids that hit last night?"

Samus furrowed her brow and closed her eyes, resting the front of her helmet in her palm.

"Space_wo_man, Neil."

"My mistake."

"Look, I just need to know what we'll have to deal with."

"Nightkin, centaurs, a few second-generation super mutants. I can tell you they won't be friendly, even after what you did for Tabitha. Something up there riled them up, and they chased something into Black Rock Cave a bit after the meteoroids hit. Don't know what they were, but they were gray and gave the locals a hell of a time."

"Thanks. And nice job using proper space terminology."

"I was an astronomer before the Great War, worked in an observatory near Two-Sun."

"It was called Tucson though, I know," Hawk said. "See you around." He walked away and motioned for Samus to follow him.

After they'd gone fifty meters from their contact, Samus spoke up.

"You're not mad at me for almost killing your contact?"

"How could I stay mad at a pretty visor like yours?" He chuckled.

Her response was to tilt her head and perk her eyebrow.

"Okay, a little. But it's an understandable mistake, what with you being new here. Those mystery men sound like more GF marines. Your upgrade can wait, we're getting them first. No telling how long they'll last."

"Agreed." Samus had never been one to shy away from one in need of help. She loathed allowing innocents and allies to come to harm when she could prevent it, although that hate was tempered with reason and logic that helped to suppress the guilt she felt when she was sometimes unable to save them. The keyword was "suppress", as the guilt never entirely went away.

"Follow me. You see a shimmer in the air, shoot it. If something's there, kill it. Nightkin are prolific Stealth Boy users, and those little gadgets make the user almost invisible for a short while."

He led her southeast, around the foot of the mountain. They advanced steadily, attempting to keep all directions covered. Samus activated her Thermal Visor and began to sweep all around, searching for anything besides her and Hawk.

After they passed a boulder, several orange silhouettes appeared in the distance. Over a hundred meters away, and perched atop a cliff, a trio of burly figures trained what seemed to be weapons on her and Hawk. It was abundantly clear to her that they were planning to ambush them. She realized they must've been cloaked, or else the Ranger with her would've noticed them by now.

She switched to her Imperialist and performed a leg sweep to get her ally out of the way, and he fell to the ground. Aiming her weapon and activating the integrated zoom function, she fired a beam of scarlet energy at the head of one of the targets. The skull of the being disappeared, and a flash of heat indicated that it decloaked.

Another two bursts dispatched the remaining two snipers before they could get off more than a single shot. That single shot hit the ground at her feet and sprayed dirt into her vision. But the Nightkin who'd fired it had died just a fraction of a second before his sole indication of resistance had left the barrel of his weapon.

Hawk, now standing upright, gazed at the cliff she'd fired on. One of the bodies fell off the edge and landed with a sickening thud, as if to assure him she hadn't just fired at shadows. He looked back at her, his body language indicating mild irritation.

"Warn me next time, alright?" He huffed, brushing himself off. "And thanks."

The two travelled onwards, then came to a small cliff. They'd have to go down it to proceed. Samus simply leapt downwards, her suit and acrobatic skills allowing her to ignore the impact. Hawk on the other hand, had to use a series of rocks in the cliff face to make his way down.

As he hit the ground, he switched to his shotgun, then changed the magazine.

"Regular shells will work better in there than 4/0 magnum," He explained. "I ain't been in this cave in years, and it probably changed some in that time. We'll go in and get them to the Ranger safehouse nearby. I'll make sure they know these guys are friendly. Then we head back here. Let's move."

He led her to the entrance to the cave, and hit a button on his Pip-Boy that turned the screen into a makeshift lamp.

Proceeding into the darkness, the two of them moved silently, keen to hear anything that might give away a potential ambush.

Suddenly, they both stopped.

"You feel that?" She asked.

"Yeah. Ground feels different." He looked downwards and knelt, running his black-gloved hands through the dirt. "Dirt's kicked up. Harder underneath."

He began to brush it away, and Samus surveyed the area, looking for hints of the marines that had supposedly been through there. She turned up her Thermal Visor's sensitivity, high enough that it would let her see residual heat from footprints. She traced several sets of them to the spot she and her cohort were standing in, where they turned to head deeper into the cave. She double-checked before returning the sensitivity to normal.

"They were right here, then they headed deeper in," Samus mused. "Find anything?"

"It's a hatch. We should check it out later."

The huntress switched to her X-Ray Visor for a moment. "It's got plumbing and wiring, something's definitely down there."

A distant echo of weaponfire caught their attention, and they rushed through the tunnels to the source. Flashlights shook about, with Federation weapons adding an orange glow to the dim tunnels as they fired.

"Dammit, take these things down!" One of them yelled.

A creature leapt onto Hawk, a freakish fusion of snake and canine. He grabbed one of the fangs and broke it off, then drove it into the beast's skull. He got up and began to fire at the pack of offending creatures.

One of them pounced at Samus, who smacked it away with her Arm Cannon before hitting it in the stomach with a shot from her Ice  
Beam. The creature was frozen to the wall, and she kicked away another that tried to attack her. That one got back up and charged towards them only to have a chunk of its neck blown away by Hawk's shotgun.

"Changing mags, cover me!" The Ranger yelled. He pulled out the drum currently in the weapon and loaded another one, with the phrase "12g DRGN" inscribed on it in chalk. Racking a new shell into the chamber, he fired a shot at one of the abominations, and where the pellets hit flames erupted. The beast fell to the floor, small flames licking at its sides.

Samus spotted a large heat signature in the distance, one that seemed to be a larger version of the creatures attacking them. She charged her Power Beam and aimed a shot at the monster. When she was sure of her shot, she fired a Super Missile. The explosive obliterated the front half of the entity.

The remaining beasts fled into small tunnels, which Hawk blocked off with the dead bodies.

"Shit, there _definitely_ weren't nightstalkers here a couple years ago," He remarked. "Marines, there's a safehouse half an hour from this cave. I'll drop you off there, but Miss Aran and I have some business to do out in the wasteland."

"How do we know we can trust you?"

"If we wanted you dead we'd have let the nightstalkers kill you. But good people shouldn't ever die like that. We found another escape pod a few miles west of here, set up a squad of marines in an old gas station. They've got a radio keyed into 140.85 AM, so you can hit them up when we get out of here. Until you get to safety, follow my lead, and stay frosty. I know what I'm doing."

The group headed towards the mouth of the cave, wary of any more ambushes. As Samus looked around in her Thermal Visor, she noticed a strange glow coming from a wall, and approached it. Suddenly, the ground collapsed beneath her, and she fell several meters to a cold metal floor. She landed on her feet and left hand and stood up, looking above to see Hawk and several marines gazing down at her.

"You alright?" He asked her.

"Fine. Get the jarheads to the safehouse."

"I'll come back for you as soon as I can. Marines, let's go!" He took the squad out of her sight.

"Sure." She didn't have a good history with 'allies'. Literally every person she'd fought alongside, which was the main thing she did anyway, either died, left her to proceed alone, or betrayed her. And the latter often ended with her killing them, though with rear echelon personnel she let the courts handle things.

She looked around and noticed her Thermal Visor was getting a lot of static, so she tried her X-Ray Visor. The hazard indicator on her heads-up display belied significant ambient radiation, something her Varia Suit was protecting her against. The same problem persisted, so she tried the Dark Visor and Echo Visor. They just took away too much detail from her view, hindering her more than helping her. On the bright side, her Combat and Scan Visor systems were completely hardened, so she wouldn't get any trouble from them.

Regardless, the chamber was fairly well-lit, with a few lights on and a couple more flickering. About as much light as there'd been on the Space Pirate frigate _Orpheon_.

She looked around for any doors, and found one with a computer next to it. Hitting the button to open the door caused a small light to flash the word "Locked" through a sepia-tinted lens.

She tried accessing the terminal next, attempting it without her Scan Visor so she could react to a threat faster. She manually opened the keyboard and balked at the primitive cathode ray tube display. It was unlocked, so she scrolled through a list of options.

** Open all doors**

**Read Log 11-11-2117**

**ALL OTHER FUNCTIONS CORRUPTED/UNAVAILABLE**

She selected the second option.

**Warning! This will end lockdown and release any hazardous entities present in the Black Mountain Research Facility. Continue?**

**Y**

**N**

She hesitated and chose not to open the doors just yet. There might have been clues on what lay ahead in the log. She accessed the log and read through.

**My name isn't important. I've been alone down here so long I'm not even sure of it. But if somebody finds this, this knowledge needs to be spread to whatever civilized, reasonable people are left. They need to know what happened. I'll do my best here, but I'm not a speaker or a writer, I'm just a scientist.**

**In the 2050s, the world's supply of fossil fuels, like oil and coal, began to run out. Our technology was so dependent on these resources we couldn't shift away from them fast enough. In 2052 he European Commonwealth unleashed their military forces on the oil-rich Middle East in an effort to gain the reserves believed to be there; as we found out years later, there were none. The intervention culminated in December 2053 with a terrorist nuclear device detonated in Tel Aviv, and a limited nuclear exchange between the war's participants, the first wartime use since 1945. But that isn't what burnt the earth to what it is now.**

**At the same time as the Resource Wars broke out, the United Nations disbanded. After the breakdown of trade talks between the world's two most powerful nations, the USA and China, and the unilateral exploitation of the last new reserves of crude oil in Alaska, China invaded in Alaska in 2066. It was a decade before the state was liberated, and in that time the US countered by invading China. **

**In 2076 the US annexed Canada, desperate for resources. For all our national pride and rhetoric, we were degenerating into a police state no better than China. All persons of Chinese descent were sent to detention camps. The harnessing of nuclear fusion was used for war rather than peace, to power energy weapons, military vehicles, and powered armor.**

**On Saturday, October 23, 2077, the bombs fell. We detected Chinese bombers using the array atop the mountain, but we really can't be certain who struck first. **

**Around a week after the initial nuclear explosions, rain started to fall; however, none of it was drinkable. The rain was black; tainted with soot, ash, radioactive elements produced by the nuclear explosions and various other contaminants produced by nuclear weapons. This rain marked the start of the terrible fallout that marked the true, permanent destruction caused by the Great War. The rain lasted four long days, killing thousands of species that had survived the initial destruction of the bombs, be they animal, plant or micro-organisms. Those few living things, human, animal or plant, that survived after the rain ended were left to live in the now barren wasteland that had spread across the Earth, where nearly all pre-War plant life had died either in the initial explosions or from the intense radiation produced by the fallout.**

**I ask you to spread this message so you can learn from my generation's mistakes, and rebuild. To band together and build a future in whatever wasteland lies above. If war were ever needed before, it isn't anymore. But I have my doubts that hope can be fulfilled.**

**Because war… War never changes.**

The log ended, and a cassette of some sort ejected from the machine. Samus tucked it away into her armor's storage, and then used the terminal to open all the doors in the facility. They squealed open as a klaxon blared, and the huntress put aside the disturbing revelations she'd uncovered, or tried to at least.

She proceeded through the facility, noting the abundance of bodies throughout. Too many looked like suicides for comfort, and more looked like maulings.

A noise came from a test chamber, and she looked through a window to see something move inside. The door was jammed shut, but an air vent nearby looked big enough for her Morph Ball form to travel through. She transformed into the alternate form, and used a Bomb to bust open the vent cover. Shards of metal flew inwards as the blue concussive blast shattered it.

Rolling through the vent, she made her way to the test chamber she'd seen earlier, just as she'd hoped. She blew this cover off as well, and rolled out of the vent. She fell ten meters to the floor and returned to her normal form.

An earsplitting shriek caught her attention, and a large pillbug-like creature rolled out of a corner. It hissed, and some pieces of its carapace flew off and spun around it like blades.

Samus scanned the creature, then dodged it as it rolled towards her. She found herself reading bits of the scan data in between dodging attacks.

**Morphology: Razorbug**

**The Razorbug is an extremely mutated version of the Earth woodlouse, specifically of the genus ****_Armadillidiidae_****, better known as the pillbug. It weighs in excess of a ton and is capable of rolling at high speeds.**

The creature rolled towards Samus, who dodged out of the way and pelted it with fire from her Battlehammer. It had no effect at all, with its thick carapace simply absorbing the fire.

**Also available to it is a series of naturally-grown metallic plates on its carapace. They are attached by sinews, and when curled into a ball, the beast can spin them to deadly effect. They retract when no longer in use, but when they are spinning the muscles tethering them to the creature can be damaged at the root where they are vulnerable. Another offensive measure it possesses is the ability to shoot acid from its mouth.**

The sphere continued to roll about and as she dodged it again, it shot out its blades, which began spinning around it like it was the bottom of a blender. It was somewhat reminiscent of the alternate form of a bounty hunter named Spire she'd encountered years ago.

She looked around for cover, something she could use to slow the arthropod down. A series of generators lined the room, and a good few of them were charged. She might be able to charge the others if she had to, but for now those would to.

Samus fired a missile at the Razorbug to catch its attention. It did exactly that, and the beast rolled towards the huntress. She aligned herself with one of the generators and waited until the last second to dodge it. The crustacean collided with the device and shrieked.

As the electricity surged through its body, the razors extended but remained mostly motionless apart from a slight shaking. A Super Missile to its front destroyed two of the tendons and sent it wheeling backwards. It collided with the stack of barrels and left a deep impression, the impact echoing throughout the chamber. The orange containers fell to the ground and spilled luminescent lime-green sludge, which barely missed falling onto the creature.

The Razorbug unrolled and hissed at its opponent. A moment later it began to spray a golden acid in her direction. She was able to dodge most of it, but some hit her and did heavy damage to her shields, taking out forty units of energy.

It chittered madly before returning to its ball form and rolling back at her. As it passed a concrete pillar, the spinning blades sliced right through it effortlessly. Samus rolled into her Morph Ball and dodged the bug for several minutes.

She uncurled near another generator and fired to attract her foe. A savage hiss warned that it was now heading straight for her. Samus readied herself to leap to the side, and stared at the mutant rolling at her. It was just a few meters from her before she sprang sideways, the fingers of her left hand just barely running across the ridged surface of the monster's carapace.

A split second later, a piercing shriek notified her that her target had once again fallen into a trap. She turned around and hit its rear end with another Super Missile. With blue-gray ichor trailing them, the tendons that held the remaining blades flew off. The beast rolled lazily forward and uncurled, stumbling about on its ten jointed legs.

Samus rolled into her Morph Ball and boosted underneath the stunned creature. Once she was under it, she hopped into the spot on its belly where it would've carried a clutch of eggs in another life. She set three Bombs and boosted out. They detonated and caused the creature even more pain as she unrolled and stared at it.

The Razorbug rolled into a ball again and spun over to the radioactive waste before unrolling. Its upper shell now coated with the slime, it began to consume the remaining material. In seconds the pool was gone, and the sludge had hardened into an outer shell the color of sewage, forming a second layer of protection.

Samus switched back to her Battlehammer and began to pound the carapace with it. She was forced to dodge a seemingly endless spray of acid in her direction, and twice was hit with the corrosive fluid. Cracks began to emerge on the outer shell, and continued pressure resulted in the exterior cracking.

A fierce hiss accompanied the shell disintegrating into a fine powder, which obscured the arthropod for several moments. The cloud suddenly dispersed around the room, tinting it green and revealing that the bug had restored its naturally-grown blade-plates, using the waste as a healing agent and a cast of sorts.

This time, the monster spun the blades nonstop. Every explosive projectile fired at the beast was sliced by the blades and rendered inert, while more conventional weaponry failed to do any damage.

After firing a salvo of Missiles at the mutant to no avail, it charged at her. She dodged it, but the blades sliced the staircase that seemed her only viable way back out.

What was worse, She couldn't find any operational generators, forcing her to try and jumpstart some with her Wave Beam. After several minutes of dodging attacks and trying to find a usable device, she got lucky and found one. The device hummed to life, and the trap worked a third time as the foolish Razorbug tried to slice and flatten her again.

Samus ran up a pile of debris, nimbly hopping from one unstable foothold to another. A rusty fan blade that spun as she landed on it was a step before an unsupported piece of sheet metal, which she used as a springboard to attain a significant altitude advantage over her foe.

As she neared the peak of her arc, she targeted each of the exposed joints with a Seeker Missile. From this angle, she wouldn't need a Super Missile to hit multiple targets or to do the necessary damage. As she stopped in midair for a fraction of a second and just before gravity took hold of her, she let loose four independently-targeted missiles, and then somersaulted to the ground.

The explosives each hit their mark precisely, and the shaped charges detonated. That type of warhead compensated for the individual missiles' already small payload size compared to other versions by focusing the blast. The explosion travelled through the path of least resistance, the hollow pocket of air a normal warhead used for carrying more explosive. The conical liner became a jet of red-hot molten copper that bored through the flesh and armor just before the explosive tore it apart.

Four blades fell to the ground as they were separated from their owner. The abomination rolled into a ball to protect itself and counterattack, only to find that the metal plates that had once been part of its exoskeleton were gone, and between them being absent and the damage to the other plates it wasn't smooth enough to roll anymore. It unrolled once again and fell on its back, squirming and trying to get up.

Its foe took advantage of this and nimbly scaled a set of obstacles near the creature, then leapt off them to achieve significant height and readied a Super Missile. At the apex of her jump, she fired the explosive.

The shot travelled through the air and hit the mutant's soft underbelly, tearing through the thick meat until it hit the inside of the carapace, at which point it exploded and Samus landed.

Chunks of cobalt blue flesh ascended from the source of the blast and showered downwards. The gore splattered onto her and trickled off her shields as she admired the smoking husk she'd left.

The remaining pieces of the Razorbug began to coalesce towards the center of the carcass, and the bladed did as well. The huntress dodged some of the remaining biomatter as it almost hit her. There was a blinding flash as they disappeared.

Looking back at the spot where the corpse had once been, she saw through her visor that technology compatible with her Power Suit was present. It seemed to be a Morph Ball upgrade of some sort. She approached it and made physical contact with it. The sphere disappeared, and she leapt into the air before curling into her Morph Ball.

A sextet of smooth and matte dark gray blades shimmered into being. Each one attached itself to one of the segments of the Morph Ball, with three on each side. She fell from the air and hit the ground again, still in her alternate form, and a moment later the blades spun out and made three full and rapid rotations around her, tethered to the ball by the same blue energy seen inside it. After the orbits completed, the blades returned to their position.

Samus returned to her normal form, and smiled as a notification appeared on her HUD.

**Razor Ball Acquired!**

**The Razor Ball uses six blades to shred through enemies and obstacles alike. It's more effective against organic objects and tissue, but can be used against metal and armor with respectable efficiency. Further data transferred to Logbook.**

After a few moments of gathering energy and ammunition, a PA system shrieked in the room, alerting the already wary Samus to more potential threats.

"_Finally got the PA online. I got here around the time you blew the first two blades off that thing, and I tried to open the door and give you some help,_" Hawk said through the aged speakers. "_That didn't work, so I tried to get this thing working. The door's jammed shut. Gimme a second…_"

"Whenever you're ready."

"_Alright, get clear. Fire in the hole!_"

Thunder rang out and shattered the door that led into the chamber. The Ranger walked through the smoke and headed to the lowest point in the staircase.

"Can you make this jump?" He asked.

"Almost."

He got on his belly and extended his left hand downwards.

"Here, jump and I'll pull you up."

After a moment of hesitation, she walked beneath him and used her Space Jump Boots to make the highest leap she could. She reached own her left hand out and grabbed Hawk's tightly.

He used his right hand to grab a guardrail and pulled her up, using the rail to pull himself up as he did so. Samus brought her right leg up onto the platform, then after a quick pull from Hawk brought her left up as well.

"_Containment seal breached. Engaging self-destruct sterilization sequence. All personnel have three minutes to exit the facility._"

"Don't worry, it happens to me all the time," Samus said. "But we should really move. Now."

"No arguments here," Hawk said as he got a running start. "I'm only getting more irradiated."

The two of them weaved through the hallways and rooms, opening doors and maneuvering past obstacles with all possible haste.

"_Two minutes remaining._"

He led them to the same place Samus had fallen in, and cupped his hands for use as a step. His partner put a boot on his hands and leapt up into the cave. He then climbed up the rubble on the walls, shimmying to the floor of the cave, which took him almost a minute.

"_One minute remaining,_" They heard from below.

They resumed their mad dash after he had his boots on the ground. Pushing their bodies to the limit, they weaved through the cave as fast as they possibly could through the underground formations, all while dodging hungry nightstalkers.

Finally they saw light, or at least moonlight, and put in one final effort. As they made it a few meters from the cave, distant thunder echoed and flames chased them out of the mouth.

The pressure wave sent them both flying and knocked them both out cold.

Samus awoke a few minutes later to Hawk tapping on her visor. Her suit was blaring an alarm, telling her it was low on energy. She got to her feet and followed her escort as he led them both to the safehouse, a journey that felt arduous after their recent exertion and injuries.

As soon as Hawk got inside, he took off his helmet and spat out blood. He then put it on a hook, letting it hang off his left hip.

"Take a load off. I'll be right there."

Samus walked by a room and found the marines from earlier, all safe and sound. She then walked back to another room and sat down on a stool by a radio. Her partner joined her and leaned on a wall. He produced an intravenous-type bag of orange liquid and drove a needle straight through his coat and whatever was underneath it into his left arm, and held up the bag with his right hand.

"What're you doing?"

"RadAway. That bunker you found was pretty irradiated." He squeezed the bag to force more of the liquid into his system. "But I couldn't just leave you down there, so I popped some RadX and went down there." Another squeeze emptied the bag and he withdrew the needle, tossing it with the bag into a trash can. "If my kidneys weren't augmented, I'd need to piss real bad soon. This stuff is a potent diuretic, but as is I don't need to pee more than once a week because of those augs."

"How much of your body _have_ you replaced?" She asked, a bit repulsed.

"I'd say twenty percent replaced, another thirty augmented. Not noticeable really, most of it's internal. Don't worry, it won't be a liability. Get some rest friend," He advised.

Samus got up from the stool and glared at him.

"Remember this Hawk, I don't trust you. I know you haven't even given me your real name, so don't try to get friendly with me. This is a business relationship, nothing else," She said.

"And I haven't even seen your face. You're just as guilty as me. You keep people even farther away than I do, it's pretty obvious. But that's part of the mask you wear," He replied calmly.

"The only 'mask' I wear is the one you're looking at."

"All of us wear masks. We wear them to spare the ones closest to us from the complicated reality of our frayed psyches. We trade honesty for companionship, and in the process never truly know the ones closest to us. And even 'close' is a relative term. No matter how much good you do, _we_ do as human beings, we'll always be dishonest."

"Now you're calling me a liar?"

"We all lie, and we all do it without thinking. When we say something that tastes like shit doesn't. When we don't tell the whole truth. When we play poker, when we sneak around, when we make a feint in battle. We justify it all too, the exceptions to rules that we make up to keep from being hypocrites." Hawk explained.

"All right, you've piqued my interest now. You're saying masks and lies are a vital part of life, something we can't be rid of. Why take the masks off then?"

"So much danger in the world, maybe the whole multiverse, is hidden behind masks. We tell children stories of good and evil, even when we know it's not that simple. True evil doesn't give us time to fight or to be afraid. People keep their heads down, never bothering to look behind masks and in doing so, resign themselves to terrible fates they can never see coming. We can do horribly evil things and be called heroes or saints because people take things a face value."

"Your point?"

"We both do great things while doing great evils. We end the lives of others without a second thought, when every person is somebody's mother or father, son or daughter, mother or sister. And we've both taken thousands of living, thinking beings from life itself. We're both alone, and we do nothing but spread that very misery."

"Oh, so I'm just as bad as people who rape, torture and murder?" Samus asked sarcastically.

"Not at all. Killing is an action, and it's something both 'good' and 'evil' people do. Actions without meaning are chaos. So every day I remind myself _why_ I wear the mask of Hawk, _why_ I lie, _why_ I try to look behind every mask including my own, _why_ I take the lives of others, _why_ I condemn myself to endless servitude. When you have a moment of downtime Samus, think about _why_ you do those things," Hawk concluded.

A/N: Don't forget to leave a comment!


	6. Climb Ev'ry Mountain

"Look, you don't have to mull it over now. It's a question that takes time to answer, so you should do it when you have plenty of time to spare," Hawk said, moving to sit on a stool next to Samus. He pulled out his trusty Vault 13 canteen and took a swig of water.

"And what if I had an answer now?" She answered. "I have a lot of time to think when I'm in my ship."

The Ranger shook his head. "Those are your weight to carry, your personal burdens. I don't expect either of us to give them out."

"And here I thought we were going to share secrets like little schoolgirls," She said sarcastically.

"Tell you what, after we get these three upgrades of yours I'll take you to Vegas for some R&R."

"Sure… What're we going to do with the marines?"

"I was thinking we send every group we find to the nearest safe area I can find. Then we send them to Vault 19. That place is cleared of hostiles, but a bunch of food and supply shipments were hijacked by the previous tenants, and they're still stored there. They'll stay on the blue side. When we figure out where-"

Samus' head perked up, and she held her Arm Cannon out. A map of the Mojave appeared, then zoomed out to a view of the region. It shortly zoomed back in on The Divide.

"_GFS Ragnarok_ located," she read aloud.

Hawk took one look at the map and shook his head. "Trust me, you'll want to be in better shape before you head there. Let's talk to the jarheads."

They got up and headed to the next room over, where the squad of nine marines was relaxing to the best of their abilities.

"Alright, listen up. The lady here can home in on any other escape pod signals _if, _andonly_ if,_ you give her the frequency to home in on. Otherwise we can't detect it except at short range. If you give us that frequency, we can find any of your buddies still in one piece. I'll send 'em to whatever place is closest where I know they'll be safe. Then we're gonna round you up and send you all to Vault 19, a bunker I know for a fact has plenty of supplies for you to use. So if you leathernecks wanna see your buddies for another ice cream social, you'd better help us find 'em."

The ranking soldier in the group, a female, fidgeted before sighing. She recited a string of numbers, and when she finished the huntress put a finger on the side of her helmet.

"There's one other. A full-sized squad of thirteen. They're alright, and holding in a mine near the 'matter-antimatter interaction' my suit displayed. We can get them when we pass by, send them to a safehouse before we hit the last location. On the way back we'll pick them up, then you guys, and the first group, and send the whole platoon to Vault 19," Samus announced.

"That sound good to you?" Mark asked the officer.

"Yes sir!"

"Good. Samus, let's head out."

The pair exited the safehouse, followed by the cave that separated the hideout from the wasteland. Upon exiting the lair, they headed southwest toward Neil's shack. From there, they followed the winding path that ascended the mountain, wary of any potential ambushes.

About halfway up, Hawk signaled for his partner to stop.

"There's nothing on Thermal or X-Ray, you're paranoid," Samus said dismissively. As she headed forwards, she stepped on a large pressure plate, hidden beneath a tarp. The plate sunk downwards, and a rumble came from nearby.

"Aw, shit," The Ranger moaned.

A cluster of four sizable boulders began to roll down the hill, appearing from around the next turn.

"Fuck it!" He kicked Samus out of their path, and she fell over the edge of a cliff. She hung by the fingers of her left hand and waited for the rumbling to pass, smart enough to realize getting back up while those rocks were rolling was a bad idea.

Hawk on the other hand, was hit with one of the boulders, which rolled right over him. He positioned himself to prevent his weapons from being damaged, but took plenty himself. Groaning, he got up a few seconds after they passed.

_Thank God for my armor and implants._ _This'd feel a lot worse otherwise._

He pulled Samus up, and she didn't hit him in retaliation for earlier. She looked over him and shook her head.

"You alright?"

It hurt to walk. It hurt to breathe. It hurt to talk. "Could be better." He reached into his pocket and pulled out several stimpacks, which he used rapidly. He tossed the five empty syringes on the ground when he was done. "Better. Stimpacks don't fix bruises though, so I'll still be sore. My nociception regulator implant will dull some of the pain on the current setting. I'll be fine."

"So there's a higher setting?"

"Yeah, and I could activate it now and block out almost all pain. But I'd rather feel pain, it reminds me I'm not invincible… Still, I've taken bullets for people, but never boulders."

He brushed himself off and gave his rifle a once-over. Satisfied it was still in decent condition, he sighed and walked on. They resumed their cautious advance, wary of another trap or ambush.

As they neared the top Hawk crouched and moved forwards, sticking to shadow. He motioned for Samus to come to him, and she did. He pointed to a formation of large black-clad troops hauling away a pile of Super Mutants.

"Enclave troopers. East Coast and Core Region variants of powered armor. Fuck, if they linked up and shared tech, maybe they're the ones who shot you down… Which would explain why they're here. They probably used a Pre-War radar array to detect your ship and fired on it with something. Probably a weapon designed to take out orbital weapons platforms in case they get hijacked by Post-War factions. That'd eliminate the biggest tactical advantage any faction could acquire over them; if they'd had that before, then they could've taken out the weapons satellite before it was used on their Mobile Base Crawler back east. And since they probably know about the Mothership Zeta incident, it provides an anti-ship weapon too…"

"I may be missing a lot of context here, but that sounds like conjecture to me," She whispered back.

"True, but in the absence of reliable intelligence, you have to work on assumptions sometimes. I wouldn't bet much on my theory, but it fits and it's all we've got now. I'll have to get a message to the Brotherhood and the NCR about this."

"What's the situation you have with the NCR and Brotherhood, anyway? You've got a formal rank, but your freedom is more like a mercenary's."

"They give me a lot of leeway. The rank is mostly so I can lead troops if I have to and access more assets. It's more than a formality, but not completely formal."

She nodded. "So, you have a plan?"

"Yeah. Hold on." He jumped up and climbed a rock face a little more than twice his height. After reaching the top, he pulled himself over and offered a hand. "I'll lift you up and we'll get a better view from here."

She leapt most of the way up and caught his hand, then climbed up alongside him. He then pulled out a pair of binoculars and gazed through them, observing the soldiers below.

"The ones in the west coast armor are more heavily armed, probably shock troopers."

A black tilt-rotor aircraft began to whine and then ascend before leaving, with the shock troopers onboard.

"Okay, the heavies are gone. They were probably here to clear the place out, while the other guys set up for real. Laser rifles, four with normals and one with a tri-beam. One with a gatling laser. One tesla armored sergeant with a gauss rifle, and a Tesla armored officer with an arc welder. Four scientists with plasma defenders."

"What can you tell me about their armor?"

"The ones in black are wearing normal east coast armor. It's made of ceramic and alloys for the most part, resists most types of damage. Tesla armor, the bronze armor with the electricity, has better mobility and are more resistant to energy weapons. The ones in white radiation suits with orange visors are the scientists, they might know where your gadget is. We should take them alive if we can, but if they put up too much of a fight, kill 'em."

"Plan?"

"… I'll hit them head-on and draw their fire. You flank left ten seconds after I engage and take out the ones in the tesla armor. That'll weaken their flank and eliminate their long-range strike ability, plus their best close-range weapon. If the one with the gatling laser isn't dead yet, focus on him. After that, prioritize targets as you see fit."

"Got it."

"Move." He crept down the rock face and took cover behind a fallen concrete pillar. Samus rushed to a position behind an outcropping in Morph Ball form, then readied herself to attack.

Hawk peeked over the pillar and aimed down his sights. The closest target to him was the one with the tri-beam laser rifle. The closer range weapon would be deadly to him if its wielder was given a few seconds to close the distance. He aligned the bent front sight of his weathered rifle with the target's head, the upper right-hand side of the blade laying right below his chin.

He held his breath and aimed for the neck. A shot to the head wouldn't pierce the angled helmet reliably, at least on the first shot, unless he had armor piercing rounds. The body wasn't as well-angled and he could punch through more easily, but it wasn't a quick kill. But the neck was an unarmored vital area.

A few pounds of pressure on the trigger fired the weapon, and the projectile travelled straight and true through the soldier's throat. As the first soldier dropped, he began to fire in their direction rapidly, drawing their attention to him.

He emptied the rifle's ten-round magazine in a few seconds, having dropped another Enclave trooper and wounded several others. After reloading, he noticed how tightly they were bunched and threw a frag grenade at them. The explosion knocked one onto his back and caused the rest to stumble.

Samus bolted out from cover and hit both her targets with a Super Missile blast, killing one. The other one began to zap her with his arc welder, until she fired several rounds of explosive emerald energy at his legs. She blew one off, and the officer clutched at the bloody stump as he released an inhuman scream.

She sprang up and stomped on his throat, choking him while she targeted the other heavy weapons specialist. A charged shot from her Wave Beam stunned him long enough for her to fire two missiles at him. His head, right arm, and much of his torso were obliterated. Twisting her boot forcefully, she snapped the officer's neck.

Hawk was charged by a single soldier, who delivered a forceful blow to his abdomen, knocking the wind out of him and sending him to the ground. His rifle fell just out of his reach, so he drew his M1911A1. The weapon, which he liked to call "Slabsides", had no suppressor attached at the moment, making it quicker on the draw. He aimed it at his attacker's head, which was somewhat difficult given that the weapon had standard-issue featureless black sights that blended with his attacker's armor, and fired. He fired six more times, emptying the magazine and dropping the trooper. He reloaded, got up and grabbed his rifle.

The remaining three focused their fire on him, and he scrambled to take cover, taking several hits from their lasers along the way.

Samus curled into her Morph Ball and boosted over to the three soldiers before activating her Razor Ball function. Six blades spun around her rapidly, slicing through the back of their knees and dismembering some of them. She then laid a trio of Bombs before boosting away. The small charges detonated and finished off the wounded just as she returned to her human form.

The duo looked around for the scientists and saw them run inside a makeshift building constructed within a gargantuan overturned radar dish.

"Let me check for mines," Samus offered. "I can see what's inside with my X-Ray Visor."

"Be my guest," Hawk replied, extending an arm as though he were the host of a party.

A few moments later she shifted back into a combat-ready stance. "Can't tell what's on the ground level. Eggheads are holed up in a makeshift basement."

The Ranger switched from his rifle to his shotgun and nodded. He loaded a drum of 4/0 buck magnum shells and racked a new shell into the chamber before slinging the weapon across his chest. There was a chance he might run into more soldiers in powered armor, and since he didn't have any pulse slugs, he'd have to make do. "Follow my lead."

He gingerly opened the door and crept in, with his accomplice following suit, and heard capacitors on several weapons charge.

"Stand up and stay your weapons!" A commanding voice barked. Reluctantly "This is United States government property. You and your friend leave now, Ranger, and you will not be prosecuted for any crimes committed tonight."

He could feel Samus glaring at him harshly, and a glance in her direction proved him right. Of course, his lenses were completely tinted, so she couldn't see his eyes. But despite all that he smiled.

"If we leave now, we might trip over all the mutants and soldiers we killed on our way in," He said with confidence.

"They knew what they signed up for, and they were the sorriest rejects I've ever had the displeasure to command!" The voice seemed to be coming from a balcony inside the dome, about four yards above him and five in front of him. Behind the officer was a series of pipes marked with hazard symbols. He was flanked by a pair of soldiers armed with plasma rifles. Another three regulars were stationed behind a barricade directly below them.

"Great plan," Samus muttered as the officer continued to rant and threaten them. "Any more ideas?"

"One," He said, his hand drifting to his holstered pistol. "Don't spook them."

The Ranger looked the enemy commander dead in the eye lenses. He drew Slabsides in a heartbeat. "You talk too much." He fired and missed the man completely, but kept his weapon trained.

"Ha! The Ranger can't even hit an easy target," He scoffed, easing his comrades' tension for a moment.

"That was a _bad_ idea." She whispered.

They all seemed to ignore the growing whistle coming from the pipes behind the commander, where the bullet had hit.

"Stick around," Hawk replied with an amused nod. "I'm full of bad ideas."

Hawk fired at the exact same place and hit his target again. The spark and heat from the bullet glancing the pipes ignited the gas. The vapor explosively combusted, killing the three soldiers on the walkway, and causing it to fall and crush the three beneath it. All six of their enemies were now dead.

"I take back what I said. That was a risky gamble," Samus remarked.

"Well… It looks like the house has gone bust. Let's find those scientists." He reloaded and holstered his pistol and grabbed his shotgun.

They wandered around the room, searching for the basement. The room was filled with crates and scientific apparatus, as well as several computer terminals. It was a whole minute before they found a trapdoor. Samus kicked it open, sending chunks of wood falling into the shadows of the unlit room.

"Come out with your hands in the air. No sudden movements. We just need to ask you a few questions. Don't give us any trouble and we'll let you go," She shouted into the darkness. A light flicked on inside and the four civilians' silhouettes were illuminated, the contrast making their attire seem dark. A few moments later they began to emerge, their arms extended as high as they possibly could be. They quickly formed a line in front of their captors.

"Alright. Question one. Where is my tech?" She demanded. "My suit says it's here, but it doesn't say exactly where."

"It's- It's in the safe marked with a radioactivity warning."

"I'll check," Hawk said. He searched through the room and found it in under a minute. "Found it. I'm bringing it over." A few seconds later he was back in her sight. In his hands was a capsule made of a transparent cylinder with a blue tint and one black hemisphere on each end. Inside was an emerald glow surrounded by three smaller orbiting spheres of the same color, tethered to the center by threads of energy.

"That's it." She nodded and Hawk tossed it to her. She caught it and inserted it into the muzzle of her Arm Cannon, which began to contort itself into a wider shape. Its configuration looked like her Wave Beam did, albeit with green highlights instead of violet.

It didn't take an expert in body language to tell the scientists were impressed by how easily she'd integrated the technology into her suit.

"We done here?" The Ranger asked

"We're done," She responded.

He watched their back while they exited the structure, wary of a surprise attack. As soon as they were outside, he shut the door and they began to run downhill. It was easy for the two of them, both in fantastic physical shape, to run a half mile downhill on the winding road. When they stopped at the foot of the mountain a few minutes later, they weren't even winded.

"So what's that new Beam do?" Hawk asked.

"It's the Nova Beam. It's got decent damage and rate of fire, it can penetrate most organic and crystalline materials without losing more than a third of its energy, it can penetrate multiple targets, and has good range. On the downside, it's not that good against multiple small targets, the high penetration can be a problem in close quarters, it's one of the loudest Beams I've used, and it's ineffective against mechanical units."

"Got it. We're a few hours from Novac, which is about halfway between here and Searchlight." He switched back to his rifle and held the receiver against his chestplate. "We'll pass through Camp Golf on the way. NCR's 1st Recon is stationed there right now, among other units."

He looked down at his armor and weapons, then grunted. He realized how damaged they were, covered in dirt, soot, blood and scratches. His armor was particularly damaged. He took off his helmet and looked it over, finding numerous dents and cuts in it.

"Shit. My gear's pretty fucked after the last few months."

He took out a small baton-like object and extended it before sticking it into the ground. He left three inches of the eighteen-inch object exposed.

"That beacon will override the Transportalponder's default Mojave destination. Instead of taking us back to the drive-in, we'll go here."

"Are we going back to the Sink?" Samus asked.

"Yeah. I'm gonna have my shit fixed up, change my gear. We'll be back here in a few hours, tops."

He pulled out the device and stood next to Samus before activating it.

A few nigh-indescribable moments later they were back in the Sink, listening to some slow-paced music.

"I'm gonna go change. Make yourself at home," Hawk offered.

He headed to his room and took off his weathered duster and helmet, then his torso armor and gray shirt. His gray jeans and boots came next. He folded the apparel neatly and sighed. Looking down at his body, he saw that he was covered in bruises and scars. Most of the scars had healed neatly or disappeared altogether, but stimpacks didn't always eliminate scarring, just mostly. Anyone could see how much abuse his body had gone through.

Sighing, he walked over to his dresser and pulled out a pair of gray pants, black-and-green boots, and several green pieces of armor. He slipped on the pants, strapped on the green knee guards, then realized he couldn't find the shirt. After looking for it all over the room, he decided to look elsewhere.

He headed into the next room and found it laying on a table, folded neatly. He bent over to pick it up, and after that he looked up to see Samus was staring at him from the doorway. It was pretty clear to him she was staring at the injuries on his torso.

He extended his index and middle fingers and brought them to his face. "Hey! My eyes are up here," He said.

The irony of it wasn't lost on her, and she cracked up at that remark. She laughed for a good ten seconds before straightening up.

"I got a lot of that when I was part of the Federation Police. But then, being six-three I was also taller than a lot of them too. I couldn't take the bureaucracy and red tape, became a bounty hunter after a couple years of that… You have anything to drink?"

"Hard stuff?" He found the shirt he was looking for and slipped it on, then plopped down on the couch.

"Soft drink. Nutrient paste and filtered water gets old after a while, and I'd like something different right now."

"Okay. Nuka Cola, Nuka Cola Victory, Nuka Cola Quartz, or Sunset Sarsaparilla?"

"What are the Victory and Quartz like?"

"Victory has an 'orange' flavor, not exactly sure what that means, but it's pretty damn refreshing. Quartz is 'lemon-lime'."

The huntress tapped her helmet, and it dematerialized in a flash of yellow light. From where he was, Hawk could see she was Caucasian, had blonde hair and a ponytail. He couldn't see her face though.

"May I serve you, madam?" The Sink's Central Intelligence Unit inquired.

"Yes. I'd like a Nuka Cola."

"Yes, madam."

An ice cold bottle of cola emerged from a chute, condensation dripping down the sides. She opened the bottle one-handed and carried it over to the small living room, where she sat down on the couch next to Hawk.

He could see her face now, and he grinned a little. She was actually quite beautiful, with blue eyes and a pretty face. Samus took a gulp of soda and sighed contentedly.

"I suppose now is a bad time to finish my story?"

"It's fine. Something to go with my soda would be nice."

He told her about of his adventures in the Mojave. How he saw a great conflict and felt compelled to resolve it. How he saved a few people from their greed at the Sierra Madre. Helping Joshua Graham experience catharsis by convincing him to let the leader of the White Legs go in a gesture of mercy. Saving the Big MT from itself and creating a sort of family of artificial personalities in The Sink. How he stopped a nuclear strike by a madman, whom he felt could've been a gift to the wasteland if he'd seen reason.

"Why did you keep fighting after all that?"

"I don't have any right to stop using my skills when I could be helping others. The only reason I have to exist is to make the world a better place than I found it. I've got a few friends, but that's it. Hell, even then they're more like frequent associates."

"Friends are a luxury."

He chuckled grimly. "All too true."

"But why 'Hawk'?"

"They only call me 'Hawk' because that's the name and the title that I've chosen to use. After my father died, I was almost happy that Vault 101 needed me, but being banished was the last thing that ever happened to me in that life. Mark Barrett Tobias is- _was_ only a man, but Hawk is a _symbol_. The hawk is a raptor, same as the eagle, the owl, the kestrel, the vulture, and the falcon; almost all of them are considered to be majestic, powerful and noble. It's a fitting name for a warrior."

Samus recollected her linguistic training when she heard his name, decoding the meaning of each.

_Mark, "consecrated to Mars", the ancient Roman god of war. Barrett, old Norse, "bear power". Tobias, "God is good", German. Very fitting._

"But the Latin root of the word 'raptor' means 'to seize' or 'take by force', and that keeps me grounded in how things work here. I'm a Presbyterian like my father, and while that's helped me cope over the years, I'm pretty sure I'm going to Hell when I die. You don't kill five thousand people personally and go to Heaven."

Samus found it odd how open he was to her, especially considering he obviously didn't trust her. Perhaps he thought that since she'd taken off part of her "mask", he had an obligation to return the favor. It still seemed awfully naïve of him to entrust a complete stranger with his personal history.

Then again, he'd practically surrendered his humanity trying to be a beacon of hope, and his occupation involved conditions that were extremely harsh even by the standards of the wastes. He killed people for a living, and because of his endeavors he expected eternal damnation.

Maybe he didn't expect that anything worse could meet him now than what awaited him after death, and he felt that even if she tried to betray him that information wouldn't make such an action any more potent. It could've been that he just felt she was someone he could talk to, even if she wouldn't talk back, or perhaps because she wouldn't interrupt his tale. Either way, it said something about Hawk's peculiar psychological state, so she made a mental note to treat him a bit more cautiously.

Whether he was angry or depressed at his lot in life was hard to say, but his list of grievances could go on for quite a while from what she knew. After everything he'd been through, the only thing he saw in his future was more suffering. He believed that even in death he would have no peace.

Samus didn't consider herself religious at all. On one hand, with the things she'd seen in her adventures, an omniscient and omnipotent being didn't sound _terribly_ far-fetched to her. On the other hand, she wasn't much of a believer in the paranormal and scientifically unexplained, and had sometimes even irritated her Chozo caretakers with her skepticism of some of their beliefs; that had made her fights with Chozo "ghosts" on Tallon IV almost funny in retrospect.

"Thanks for listening," He said casually as he got up.

Hawk took his previous set of clothing, armor and weapons to a bin of some kind and said something to it before dumping them in.

_Done with that. The brainiacs can fix it up and improve the tech inside and the materials themselves. And since they claim to like the look, they won't go changing the outside._

Hawk smiled and returned to his room, where he resumed putting on the rest of Pre-War US government Elite Riot Gear.

After donning the helmet, he began picking his weapons. He grabbed a custom 12.7mm pistol, he'd taken to simply calling "Li'l Devil". An assault carbine with a forged receiver was slung over his shoulder. A sniper rifle with a suppressor was quickly slung over his back, and he sheathed his trusty Bowie knife, Blood-Nap. Lastly, he grabbed the Red Glare, a multi-shot prototype rocket launcher he'd found in The Divide. After mounting that on his back, the weapon compressed to a shorter form barely more than a yard long, one of its innovative features; it still weighed 20 pounds though, about as much as the rest of his weapons combined.

He left his room and straightened the black trenchcoat. Samus was wearing her helmet again, and she glanced in his direction before getting to her feet. They walked to the hub, stood close together, and Hawk activated his Transportalponder.

In a few moments, they were back at the foot of Black Mountain, where the Ranger pulled the beacon from the ground and retracted it. Tucking the cylinder away, he cracked his neck and moved his carbine to hang in front of his chest.

He tuned his Pip-Boy to one of the newer stations that had begun to broadcast in the region. The two of them began to walk south, heading around the mountain. They could see the sun crawling over the eastern horizon, highlighting the outline of the mountain as a new day started.

"_Welcome back to Sonoran Sounds Station, or as I like to call it, S3! Broadcasting to you straight from Phoenix, the best place in the Sonoran Wastes. Before we get back to the playing best Pre-War beats, I'd like to give a shout-out to the Tobias family; they've kept our homes safe and free from raiders and Legion forces alike, and helped give this sunburnt town a way to a brighter future. And in these tough times, we need that light at the end of the tunnel. Now here's something to cool off the guys and gals guarding our gates and keeping what's left of Maricopa county safe_."

A jazzy tune began to play, with a piano, electric organ and drum working in harmony to create an upbeat piece of music. He kept on walking through the rest of the song before Samus said something.

"You think the Tobias family that guy mentioned might be-"

"No. I don't think so. If I had some of my dad's old journals, I could find out, but those are back in the Capital Wasteland. The Brotherhood locked 'em away, since they couldn't figure out what to do with them after they got Project Purity running. The only other lead would be Dr. Madison Li. She worked with my dad, she was the one who delivered me, and she helped get the purifier operational. She disappeared after I went into a coma, and I don't know where she is. Either way, it's chasing ghosts, and we've both got better things to do." His reply was cold and impersonal.

He'd tried to make it clear that he was only Hawk now, and that Mark didn't matter to him anymore. It was a piece of him that wouldn't quite die completely, no matter how much he wanted it too. True, it shrunk smaller each day, but just having that now-weak piece of hope and optimism seemed like a weakness. The only part of Mark he accepted was his values, and even those were slipping to cynicism.

"I'm sorry if I came off badly there. I just don't like talking about Mark."

"You change yourself trying to be something better, something with a higher purpose. You make compromises along the way and you become that symbol you wanted to be. But now you're not so sure what that symbol means anymore, even when everybody else thinks they do. Because in becoming that symbol you lose part of yourself, the part that's exactly what you're trying to protect. Innocence, optimism, hope for your own future."

"You know the feeling too?"

"The Chozo wanted me to be a knight. I tried, but I ended up a mercenary. Same fight, different methods. I feel like I let them down sometimes."

"Yeah, you have to wonder what the ones who brought us up think of us now." He looked around, noticing that there was some grass on the ground, as well as the tents and buildings over the hills. "Okay then. We're a quarter of the way there."

They ascended the hill and looked out at the numerous barracks, tents, and the resort itself.

"Welcome to Camp Golf. The resort building is the regional HQ for the NCR Rangers, it's got some of the best equipment outside of the Hoover Dam. The tents here used to be filled with misfits and losers in the regular army."

"Who's in them now?"

"After the dissolution of the NCR Shock Troopers, when they gave their salvaged power armor back to the local chapter of the BoS, there was a vacuum to fill. There was just the Rangers, who are the elite of the elite, the 1st Recon, a sniper unit, and everybody else. A year ago, I was reading a few assessments of the Second Battle of Hoover Dam and the peripheral battles, then the Third Battle, which was a final Legion advance that shattered what was left of them when it failed. The reason the Legion's last effort was so effective, despite being poorly coordinated, was because there was a shortage of soldiers trained to exploit weaknesses in enemy lines and strike at high value targets. Newer Rangers were used for that role, and they had high casualty rates. We won, but most of the Rangers' lower echelons, with their unarmored cowboy-esque clothing were wiped out. They weren't equipped for conventional combat, they were equipped for recon. Mid-tier and veteran Rangers did that job well, but they were too few to be used effectively. Needless to say, now all Rangers are issued the brown patrol armor, and the veterans still use the same kind of armor I wore before."

"So you saw firsthand that your people were being used improperly?"

"Yeah. Then I had an idea: create an elite infantry unit. I got an okay for a trial run after explaining the idea to the brass. I took some ex-Shock Troopers, the more skilled grunts, and some of the tougher 1st Recon snipers and gave them Reinforced Combat Armor Mk 2, with khaki fatigues instead of the black ones that armor usually comes with. I trained them to fight as a team, and when they were finally tested, they exceeded expectations. Now the Stray Dogs are a few battalions strong. Their Mojave unit is based here."

By the time he finished explaining, they were walking through the heart of the camp. The soldiers ignored them, going about their morning routines. It wasn't long before they left the boundaries of the place, and continued on the trek to Novac.


End file.
